ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
FREEMASONRY
AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES

The sixth letter in the English and Latin
alphabets, and the same as the Greek digamma or the ¢ or
ph. and the vau of the Hebrew, which has a numerical value of
six.

F. . In French Masonic documents the abbreviation
of Frére, or Brother. FF. . is the abbreviation of Fréres,
or Brethren.FABRE-PALAPRAT BERNARD RAYMOND

The restorer, or, to speak more correctly,
the organizer of the Order of the Temple at Paris, of which he
was elected Grand Master in 1804. He died at Pau, in the lower
Pyrénées, February 18, 1838 (see Temple Order of
the).
FACULTY OF ABRAC

In the so-called Leland Manuscript. it is
said that Freemasons "conceal the way of wynninge the facultye
of Abrac." That is, that they conceal the method of acquiring
the powers bestowed by a knowledge of the magical talisman that
is called Abracadabra (see Abracadabra and Leland Manuscript).
FAITH

In the theological ladder, the explanation
of which forms a part of the instruction of the First Degree of
Masonry, faith is said to typify the lowest round. Faith, here,
is synonymous with confidence or trust, and hence we find merely
a repetition of the lesson which had been previously taught that
the first, the essential qualification of a candidate for initiation,
is that he should trust in God. In the lecture of the same Degree,
it is said that "Faith may be lost in sight; Hope ends in
fruition; but Charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless
realms of eternity And this is said, bee cause as faith is "the
evidence of things not seen," when we see we no longer believe
by faith but through demonstration; and as hope lives only in
the expectation of possession, it ceases to exist when the object
once hoped for is at length enjoyed, but charity, exercised on
earth in acts of mutual kindness and forbearance, is still found
in the world to come, in the sublime form of mercy from God to
his erring creatures.
FAITHFUL BREAST

See Breast, the Faithful
FALK, RABBI DE

A native Israelite of Furth, who attracted
attention in London at the close of the eighteenth century in
consequence of his presumed extraordinary powers, acquired through
the secrets of the Cabala, as a Thaumaturgist, a worker of wonders.
It was alleged. among other surprising stories that he could and
did transmute metals, making one into another, and thereby acquired
large sums with which he was liberal to the poor. A merry incident
is perhaps not familiar to the reader. An invitation was extended
by the Baal Shem, the sacerdotal pronouncer of the Holy Name,
to the Doctor to call as a visitor for a friendly and philosophical
discussion. This was assented to, when the Doctor was asked to
fix a time.

He did so by taking from his pocket a small
taper and, handing it to his new friend, saying: "Light this,
sir, when you get home, and I shall be with you as soon as it
goes out." This the gentleman did next morning, expecting
an early call, but the taper appeared to have a charmed life,
and it was deposited in a special closet, where it continued to
burn for three weeks, and until in the evening, when the Doctor
drove up to the door and alighted, much to the - surprise of the
host, who, with wonderment, had watched the bright-burning taper.
As soon as his visitor was announced, the light and candlestick
disappeared. The Doctor was asked if the candlestick would t)e
returned, when he replied, "It is already in the kitchen;"
and so it was found. A further incident is mentioned of his leaving
upon his death a sealed box to his particular friend, Aaron Goldsmid,
stating that to open it portended evil. Aaron could not withstand
his curiosity, and one day opened it, and ere the night came Aaron
was picked up dead.

Mackenzie in his Royal Masonic Cyclopedia
appears to make three individuals out of the one personality His
dates are wrong and he evidently has a suspicion that two of the
characters, Rabbi de Falk and Caïn Chenuel Falk, or Falcon,
may be the same person as they undoubtedly are, but he further
refers to John Freidrich Falk a son of the preceding born at Homburg
of Jewish parents, reported to have been the head of the Cabalistic
college in London and to have died about 1824. As Doctor Falk
had no children this seems another confusion The description would
fit Falk himself. But see paper by Doctor Adler (transactions
Jewish Historical Society of England, volume v, page 148) entitled
the "Baal Shen of London," Baal Shen meaning Master
of the Name of God or one able to work miracles through the Name
of God.
This expression became a professional designation
for a practitioner combining quack doctor, physician and cabalist
in his art. Born in Podhayce, in Poodle, a portion of Poland.
a territory afterwards included in the Austrian Empire, he came
to London in 1742 where he gained a position of notoriety by his
practices and strange stories were told of supernatural achievements
which evidently lost nothing in the telling. He died on April
17 1782.

FALL OF WATER

See Waterfall
FAMILY LODGE

A Lodge held especially for the transaction
of private and local business of so delicate a nature that it
is found necessary to exclude, during the session, the presence
of all except members. In France a Lodge when so meeting is said
to be en family, or in the family, a private affair, and the
meeting is called a tenue de famille or family session; in Germany
such Lodges are called, sometimes, Familien-Logen, but more generally
Conferenz-Logen (see Conference Lodges) .
FAMOUS MEN AND MASONS

From the end of World War I to the end of
World War II Freemasonry was through no fault of its own drawn
into the most public centers of European conflict, and had the
misfortune to become, when war was loosed, one of the casus belli;
as when one of Hitler's announced reasons for opposing Czechoslovakia
was that President Benes was a Freemason; and when, later, Pétain
tried over the radio to justify himself as against Daladier on
the ground that Daladier was a Mason (see on this latter Pierre
van Passen's great book, Days of Our Years; van Passen himself
belonged to the Grand Orient of Franee). In consequence of these
new world developments the question as to who is and is not a
Mason has become more than one of idle curiosity; has indeed become
almost a specialty, and apparently has established itself as a
regular department in Masonic periodicals and books.

A roster of public men and of men of eminent
fame in the arts and sciences of Europe, Britain, and this Continent
would fill this whole volume; those here given are selected to
show from how many quarters of the compass Masons come; and how
Freemasonry appeals to nothing in a man except that he is a man;
and that like St. John's New Jerusalem in the skies it opens its
gates North, South, East, and West.

In an address to the Duke of Kent, Grand
Master of England, April 30, 1941, the Pro Grand Master quoted
"words used by the Prime Minister [himself a Freemason] the
last time when he broadcast to the nation." (Churchill.)
Irving Bacheller, author of Eben Holden, was made a Mason in Kane
Lodge, No. 454, December 5, 1899. The Rev. S. Parkes Cadman was
raised in Shekomenko Lodge, No. 458, Pleasant Valley, N.Y., June
18, 1892; and from 1909 was a Grand Chaplain, Grand Lodge of New
York, until his death, July 12, 1936. Sir Walter Besant, famous
for the books he wrote, notably the great series of volumes on
the history of London, was made a Mason in Mauritius in 1862;
it was Besant who first conceived the idea of forming the Quatuor
Coronati Lodge, and suggested it to W. R. Rylands, who started
the movement.

Luther Burbank was made a Mason in Santa
Rosa Lodge, Calif., August 31, 1921. His great forerunner, Charles
Darwin, was not, it is believed, himself a Mason but most of the
men in his family were, including his almost equally famous grandfather,
Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Rear Admiral Byrd is a member of Kane Lodge,
No. 454, New York City; in 1930 the Lodge presented him with its
Explorer Medal; he in return presented the Lodge with the U.S.
flag he had carried over the South Pole.

William Jennings Bryan was made a Mason
in Masonic Lodge, No. 19, Lincoln, Neb., April 15, 1902; he later
affiliated with Temple Lodge, No. 247, Miami Fla. Irving Berlin,
America's most popular composer, is a Mason; in the New York Masonic
Outlook, page 11, September, 1930, he expressed a love and admiration
for the Craft.

H. P. H. Bromwell, Colorado's most famous
Mason, author of Restoration of Masonic Symbolry, a work of prodigious
erudition, was made a Mason in Temperance Lodge, No. 16, Vandalia,
Ill., in 1854. Edward Gibbon, historian, was a member of Lodge
of Friendship, No. 3, a very old Lodge of which an excellent history
has been published, in London; his Grand Lodge Certificate was
dated December 19, 1774. Clarence Boutelle, it will satisfy many
inquirers to know, author of Man of Mount Moriah, was made a Mason
in Rochester Lodge, No. 21, 1885; and was a contributor to Masonic
periodicals.

The author of The Last Days of Pompeii,
Lord Bulwer-Lytton, was a Mason, a Rosicrucian, and wrote the
poem, "The world may rail at Masonry." Davy Crockett
was a Mason the Texas Grand Lodge Magazine published a photograph
of his R.A. Apron but his affiliation remains unknown. Bolivar,
the George Washington of South Ameriea, was made a Mason in Cadiz,
Spain. Gran Martin, who won the independence of the Argentine,
was made a Mason in England, founded a Lodge in Rio de Janeiro,
and had a copy of the Book of 11, Constitutions translated into
Spanish. Edwin Booth, the actor, was a member of New York Lodge,
No. 330, N.Y.C. Sibelius, the composer of "Finlandia,"
is a SIason, and composed a musical accompaniment for the Degrees.
Houdini, magician, was made a Mason in the afternoon musicians'
and actors' Lodge, St. Cecile, No. 568, New York City, August
21, 1923; he accumulated an expert's library on magic, occultism,
ete.; (see The New York Masonie Outlook; March, 1927; page 206;
and The Master Mason; April, 1926; page 293).

William F. Kuhn, one of Kansas City's most
eminent citizens, a son of Alsatian emigrants, born in Lyons,
N.Y., April 15, 1849, grew up in Michigan among the celery farms,
graduated from Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio, in 1871,
taught a while; graduated from Jefferson Medieal College, Phila.;
settled in Eldorado, Kans., for four years, then moved to Kansas
City, where he practiced, taught medicine, and all the while had
his heart in Masonry, having been made a Mason at Belle Center,
Ohio; during his three years as General Grand High Priest he evangelized
the Craft throughout the country "on the necessity for the
Holy Royal Arch." Bro. David Eugene Smith aroused general
interest when he presented the Grand Lodge Library of New York
with a number of original documents written or signed by famous
Eighteenth Century Frenchmen and Masons; one of them, a certificate
which belonged to Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin (it is not believed
that he invented the guillotin or that it was named for him),
carries a constellation of signatures once known over Europe (see
The New York Masonic Outlook; February, 1929; frontispiece)- Arthur
Nash, famous as the founder of the "Golden Rule Nash Business"
in Cincinnati, was a Masonry-made man, became a Mason in Masonic
Blue Lodge, in 1909, Waterville, Ohio; he will long be remembered
in Cincinnati for the help he gave to the S2,000,000 Temple Fund.
Wilbur D. Nesbit, author of the poems "My Flag and Your Flag,"
and "I Sat in Lodge With You" was a member of Evans
Lodge, No. 624, Evanston, III., famous for its Masters' Lectures.

General Douglas D. MacArthur, like his father
before him, is a Mason; like President Taft, he was "made
at sight," the Grand Master of the Philippine Islands conferring
that honor in January, 1936, at Manila, where the General affiliated
with Manila Lodge, No. 1, thereby coming under a Grand Jurisdiction
which admits Chinese and men of almost every other Asiatic nationality.
touch is made of the fact that so many commanders in the Allied
armies and navies are Masons, but it calls for no comment; Lodge
life means more to army and navy men than to civilians. Thomas
R. Marshall, Vice-President for eight years, was a member of the
Supreme Council, N.J., from 1911; from the time he retired from
the Vice-Presidency until his death in 1925 he devoted the whole
of his time to Freemasonry. Captain Frederick Marryat, author
of MT. Midshipman Easy, with the British Navy in the War of 1812,
became a Mason in Lodge of Antiquity No. 2, one of "The Four
Old Lodges," while the Duke of Sussex was W.-.M.-. and Marryat
became a Warden; he was in the most distinguished Lodge in the
world, which had written in its books the names of Anderson and
Desaguliers, and of which William Preston had been Master; Prime
Minister George Canning, who fathered the Monroe Doctrine on our
President Monroe, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, were among his
Lodge mates the great two-volume history of the Lodge by Bros.
Rylands and Firebrace is a gallery of men famous in Masonry as
well as in the public life of Britain; Christopher Wren is said
to have been a Master of it.

Lord Chesterfield was a Masons as were most
of the men in the Stanhope family, and was once asked to be Grand
Master of the Antient Grand Lodge; though author of Chesterf eld
Ss Letters to his Son, a treatise on diplomatic manners and courtly
behavior, there was no effeminancy in him, and he held many high
offices of state, being once the Governor General of Ireland.
(see Gould's History; Vol. II; page 159.) The Craft in Ireland
then (as now) was starred with famous names the Duke of Wellington
among them (Lodge No-494; Dec.7,1791), and Laurenee Dermott, creator
of the Antient Grand Lodge.

The American Craft, though the fact is overlooked
or generally unknown, owes more to Ireland and the Antients, of
which it was mother and exemplar, than to the Grand Lodge of 1717,
because our rules, customs, and Ritual generally are of Irish
origin; and if American students and Research Lodges will turn
to the subject they will open up the richest of the unexplored
fields of American historical research. When they do they will
become acquainted with the author of one of the very few Masonic
classicsclassic when considered solely as literature the
re-written version of the Anderson Constitutions composed by the
gifted John Pennell, published by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in
1730; Gould, with a harshness of judgment which too often was
his weakness, described it as "little more than Anderson's
publication [it was Grand Lodge's, not Anderson's, publication]
brought down to date"; but Penned re-wrote the whole of it,
and his Irish Brother, Dean Swift, could not have done it better,
if as well.

Admiral George W. Baird, once Grand Master
of District of Columbia and for years writer of its Foreign Correspondence
Report, who had fought in the Mexican War, had supervised the
installation of the first electric lighting on an American Naval
vessel, who illustrated his letters with little cartoons in color
of an amazing skill, discovered one where a monument to a Mason
had had its Masonic emblems defaced, and then went on to discover
that there was at work a general endeavor to erase out of history
and other records the Masonic membership of famous American public
and military men; he became so wrathful that he began a nation-wide
investigation at his own expense of time and money; it resulted
in his publication in The Builder of a long series of "Memorials,"
which was in part later re-issued as one volume in the Masonic
Service Association's Little Masonic Library but he was never
able to prepare more than a portion of his overflowing material
for print. (The Freemasons, by Eugene Lennhoff, one of the most
powerful of Masonic books, is a gallery of hundreds of famous
European Masons; Oxford University Press; New York; 1934. Famous
Masons, by H. L. Haywood; Masonic History Company; Chicago; 1944,
contains short biographies of one hundred famous Masons [famous
for their work in the Craft], and long chapters on "Presidents
Who Were Masons.")
FANATICISM

The English interpretation of the name of
the second assassin of the Grand Master, or of mankind. The frenzy
that over-balances the mind. The Gravelot or Romvel of philosophical
Freemasonry.
FANOR

The name given to the Syrian Freemason,
who is represented in some legends as one of the assassins, Amru
and Metusael being the other two.
FARRAGUT, ADMIRAL DAVID GLASGOW

A famous American Civil War Admiral, born
near Knoxville, Tennessee, July 5, 1801; died August 14, 1870.
He entered navy at nine. First to possess grade of admiral in
United States Navy. He was a Freemason. The Masonic Lodge at Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, conducted his burial service (see .New .Age, July,
1994).
FASCES

The bundle of rods borne before the Roman
magistrates as an insignia of their authority. In French Freemasonry,
faisceau, or fasces, is a term used to denote a number of speeches
or records tied up in a roll and deposited in the archives.
FASCISM AND MASONRY

Benito Mussolini and his collaborators developed
a well-rounded philosophy for the Fascist party, which, though
never collected or stated in one book, was a unified body of theory;
it consisted of a statement of the Fascist program, an exposition
of its theories along with a defense of them, an attack on what
Mussolini called democracy, liberalism, parliamentarianism, etc.
(he had Scarcely more than a vestige of knowledge about the United
States or of democracy, and little more about England and France;
excepting when hiding out in Switzerland he spent his life in
middle-class Italian circles); and an attempt to make Fascist
theory look like a continuation or fulfillment of what Mussolini
believed the "ideology" of Rome to have been.

Regular Freemasonry had never had Lodges
in Fascist Italy (there were a large number of irregular Lodges
and of political clubs masquerading as Masonry) but Masonic ideas
had infiltrated the country; there is no shadow of doubt that
Mussolini shaped more than one of his dogmas with an eye on those
ideas. (The greatest book, and most brilliantly written, thus
far published on Fascism, is Goliath, by G. A. Borgese: Viking
Press; N. Y.; 1937. Dr. Borgese is guilty of an error in one of
his references to Freemasonry: he says that it has "an Eighteenth
Century ideology" Freemasonry was centuries old before 1700.
It has no "ideology" neither now nor ever.)

It is one of the pleasures of the warfares
of the mind to admire one's enemy. Even Thomas Aquinas paid a
soldier's tribute to Avicenna and Averroes. But no Mason can admire
the books put out by the Fascist Anti-Masons, either Italian or
French, because they are rehashes of three or four old Anti-Masonic
books which the Rev. George Oliver reviewed and criticized in 1856.
Prof. Robison had a mind like Marshal Pétain's, simple,
amiable, and treacherous; the Abbe Barruel was credulous, his
book consisting of scraps of gossip picked up in provincial papers.
Yet the Abbe Gruber, Nesta Webster, Bernard Fa, Rosenberg the
so-called "Black Balt," and the rest bring out the arguments
and allegations of Robison and Barruel and state them and print
them one after another after they had been stated and printed
thousands of times ever since the days, incredibly enough, of
our Revolution!

They are flat, stale, and unprofitable,
and unutterably wearisomethe Abbe Gruber who had done the
same chore of threshing the same straw for the Catholic Encyclopedia
privately expressed his disgust, and regretted in his old age
that he had not been more honorably-minded in his youth. Even
a Mason could think up a better set of arguments against Masonry
than the scribes to whom the Fascists paid the salaries, better,
and certainly more original, and also a great deal more brilliant.

(A Fascist Anti-Mason is also a man before
he is a Fascist and ought to be able to keep hold of his own intellect,
and be able to use it a little; the penalty he had paid in the
eyes of his foes for failing to do so is the derisive one that
his books were reviewed and answered a century before they were
written. See The History of Masonic Persecution, edited by the
Rev.George Oliver; New York; James W. Leonard & Co.; 1850
It will be found as Vol. VIII in the Universal Masonic Library;
in Vol. VII of the same collection see list of Anti-Masonic movements
active in the 1850's.)
FAST DAYS AND FREEMASONRY

In the earls days of the Lodge "Canongate
Kilwinning from Leith," now Saint David, Edinburgh, No. 36
the records of the Lodge occasionally make reference to the adjournment
or cancellation of the regular meeting upon account of the date
coinciding with that fixed by royal proclamation "as a day
of fasting, humiliation, and prayer." The Minute of Saint
John the Evangelist day, December 27, 1739, concludes as follows:
The Right Worshipful toasted and drunk the
usual healths upon this occasion. and the Lodge was closed by
the proper officers and adjourned till Thursday the tenth day
of January 1740 the Wednesday preceding being a National fast
day therefore we could have no meeting as usual.

From the Scots Magazine we learn the reason for the observance
of this "National fast day" Edinburgh, November 1739.
The Reverend Commission of the General Assembly met the beginning
of this month and agreed on an act for a national fast, to implore
the blessing of God for success to his Majesty's arms, &e.
At the same time. they humbly addressed
his Majesty to nominate the day on which it should be observed,
and further to interpose his royal authority for that effect.
In consequence of this, the King has been pleased. by a proclamation.
to order its observance on the 9th day of January next, thro'
Scotland; as also in England and Wales.

A reference to the holding of the Fast is
contained in the January number of the same magazine:

Agreeable
to the address of the Commission of the General Assembly, and
the royal proclamation consequent thereupon the 9th of January
was observed as a May of fasting, humiliation and prayer, to implore
the blessing of God on his Majesty's arms, &e.

War was declared in October, 1739, between the forces of George
II, of Great Britain and Ireland, and of Philip V, of Spain, and
only came to an end with the Treaty of Peace signed in October,
1748. In consequence of the war, and the weather, the regular
meetings of the Lodge in April and October 1744 were given up
altogether. "April 10th, 1744 New Lodge being the day appointed
for a National fast." The date, which should really be April
11, was fixed by royal proclamation to be observed as in the former
instance "as a fast throughout G. Britain, on account of
the war with Spain."

Cannongate Killwinning from Leith 10th of
October. 1744 Year of Masonry, 5744 . This being the Day immediately
after the fast appointed by the Presbytery for the judgment like
weather it was thought proper to hold no Lodge but adjourned to
the 14th Nov. next.

From what are termed "Poetical Essays"
printed in the October number of the Scots Magazine of that y
ear we obtain some idea of "the judgment like weather"

The author of these lines appears to have
had no doubt as to the cause of the ruined harvest "Tis for
our crimes" but as referred to in Graham's Social Life of
Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, the folks of these days seemed
sometimes to find it very difficult to decide whether a calamity
was due to the devil who is vexing a man! or due to Heaven which
is punishing him. To quote further from the same book:

In the religious life of Scotland in the
early decades of the eighteenth century, the intense religious
fervor and faith which characterized the covenanting days retained
all its influence and hold over great masses of the people of
all classes, and the belief in the constant interference of Providence
with every act of existence, however minute, was unbounded.

That there were unbroken, unbreakable laws,
a succession of physical cause and effect, inevitable, changeless,
passing on their silent course unbending to mortal prayers, unyielding
to human needs this, of course, was a conception of the material
world unknown to those days, incredible to these men.

When calamaties befell the country it was
not easy to discriminate for which or for whose particular sins
the wrath was shown. When therefore a Fast and day of humiliation
was appointed to avert the hand of Providence, there was always
announced a list of various alternative sins for which penitence
was due.

When the 'ill years" came with frost
and hoar, snow and rain, destroying crops and starving the people,
the General assembly ordered a Fast. comprehensively "to
appease the anger of God for the sins of Sabbath breaking, profanity,
drunkenness, uncleanness and infidelity." A. M. Mackay P.
M. 36.

The above information furnished to us by Past Master A.
M. Mackay; Royal Lodge of Saint David, No. 36.
FATHER AND PROMOTER

A title of affection bestowed on an English
Brother, John Maclean, in 1766. The thanks of the Chapter were
given to him for his instructions and attendance, and as a mark
of the respect of the Brethren he was requested to wear a gold
plate suitably engraved in Latin with the following inscription:
"The Father of the Society By the gift of the Companions
of the Royal Arch stilled the Grand and Royal Chapter of Jerusalem,
London, A. L. 5770

Glory to God in the highest.
In the beginning was the word We have found."

He was also presented with a robe peculiar
to the Past Most Excellent Zerubbabel. Note as to year that the
Grand Chapter added 4004 to the Christian Era, 1766 (see Origin
of the English Rite of Freemasonry, Brother W. J. Hughan, 1913,
page 109).
FAVORITE BROTHER OF SAINT ANDREW

The Ninth Degree of the Swedish Rite
FAVORITE BROTHER OF SAINT JOHN

The Eighth Degree of the Swedish Rite
FAVORITE OF SOLOMON

The Seventh Degree, Third Division, of the
system of the Chapter of the High Degrees of Stockholm (see Thory,
Acta Latomorum i, 313).
FEAST

The convocation of the Craft together at
an annual feast, for the laudable purpose of promoting social
feelings, and cementing the bonds of brotherly love by the interchange
of courtesies, is a time-honored custom, which is unfortunately
growing into disuse. The Assembly and Feast are words constantly
conjoined in the Book of Constitutions.

At this meeting, no business of any kind,
except the installation of officers, was transacted, and the day
was passed in innocent festivity. The election of officers always
took place at a previous meeting in obedience to a regulation
adopted by the Grand Lodge of England, in 1720, as follows: "It
was agreed, in order to avoid disputes on the annual feast-day,
that the new Grand Master for the future shall be named and proposed
to the Grand Lodge some time before the feast" (see Constitutions,
1738, page 111).
FEASTS OF THE ORDER

The festivals of Saint John the Baptist
and Saint John the Evangelist, June 24 and December 27, are so
called.
FEELING

One of the five human senses, and esteemed
by Freemasons above all the others. For as Anthony Brewer, an
old dramatist, says:
Though one hear, and see, and smell, and taste,
If he wants touch, he is counted but a block
FEES OF HONOR

In the Grand Lodge of England every Grand
Officer, on his election or re-election, is required to pay a
sum of money, varying from two to twenty guineas, an amount ranging
from say ten to one hundred dollars. The sums thus paid for honors
bestowed are technically called Fees of Honor. A similar custom
prevails in the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland; but the
usage is unknown in America.
FEE, TEST

See Test Fee
FEIX-FEAX

A term signifying School of Thought, which
is found in the First Degree of the French Adoptive Rite.
FIELD LOGE

What is designated in England and America
as a Military or Traveling Lodge is called in Germany a Feld Loge.
Sometimes, ein ambulance Loge.
FELICITAIRES, ORDRE DES

French for the Order of Happy People. An
Order established in Paris in 1742 or 1743 by Brother de Chambonnet
and several officers of marine. All the emblems of the Order,
the ritual and expressions were nautical in character.

The Order, which for a long time conducted
its proceedings without reproach, numbered at first many noblemen
and distinguished women amongst its members but later the meetings
became 80 grossly immoral in character that, within two years
of its foundation, it was dissolved, to be succeeded in 1745 by
L'Ordre des Chevaliers et Chevaliers de l'Ancre, the latter meaning
anchor. The principal features of The Order of Happy People were
followed, their four Degrees being Cabin-boy, Captain, Commodore,
and Vice-Admiral. Only) the passwords and regalia were changed.
The cable was replaced by an anchor, this becoming the jewel of
the Order.
FELICITY, ORDER OF

An androgynous, or both sexes, secret society,
founded in 1743, at Paris. by M. Chambonnet. It was among the
first of the pseudo-Masonic associations, or coteries, invented
by French Freemasons to gratify the curiosity and to secure the
support of women. It had a ritual and a vocabulary which were
nautical in their character, and there was a rather too free indulgence
in the latitude of gallantry. It consisted of four Degrees, Cabin
Boy, Master, Commodore, and Vice Admiral. The chief of the order
was called Admiral, and this position was of course occupied by
M. Chambonnet, the inventor of the system (Clavel, Historie Pittoresque,
page 111).
FELLOW

The Saxon word for fellow is felaw. Spelman
derives it from two words be and toy, which signifies bound in
mutual trust a plausible derivation, and not unsuited to the meaning
of the world. But Hicks gives a better etymology when he derives
it from the Anglo-Saxon folgian, meaning to follow and thus a
fellow would be a follower, a companion, an associate. In the
Middle Ages, therefore, the Operative Masons were divided into
Masters and Fellows. Thus in the Harleian Manuscript, No. 2054,
it is said: "Now I will rehearse other charges in singular
for Masters & fellows." Those who were of greater skill
held a higher position and were designated as Masters, while the
masses of the Fraternity, the commonalty, as we might say, were
called Fellows. In the Matthew Cooke Manuscript this principle
is very plainly laid down. There it is written that Euclid "ordained
that they who were passing of cunning should be passing honored,
and commanded to call the cunninger Master .... and commanded
that they that were less of wit should not be called servant nor
subject, but Fellow, for nobility of their gentle blood"
(see lines 675-88). From this custom has originated the modern
title of Fellow Craft, given to the Second Degree of Speculative
Freemasonry; although not long after the revival of 1717 the Fellows
ceased to constitute the main Body of the Fraternity, the Masters
having taken and still holding that position.
FELLOW CRAFT

The Second Degree of Freemasonry in all
the Pites is that of the Fellow Craft. In French it is called
Compagnon; in Spanish, Compañero; in Italian, Compagno;
and in German, Gesell: in all of which the radical meaning of
the word is a fellow workman, thus showing the origin of the title
from an operative institution. Like the Degree of Apprentice,
it is only preparatory in the higher initiation of the Master;
and yet it differs essentially from it in its symbolism.

For, as the First Degree was typical of
youth, the Second is supposed to represent the stage of manhood,
and hence the acquisition of science is made its prominent characteristic.

While the former is directed in all its
symbols and allegorical ceremonies to the purification of the
heart, the latter is intended by its lessons to train the reasoning
faculties and improve the intellectual powers.

Before the eighteenth century, the great
Body of the Fraternity consisted of Fellow Crafts, who are designated
in all the old manuscripts as Fellows. After the revival in 1717,
the Fellow Crafts, who then began to be called by that name, lost
their prominent position, and the great body of the brotherhood
was, for a long time, made up altogether of Apprentices, while
the government of the institution was committed to the Masters
and Fellows, both of whom were made only in the Grand Lodge until
1725, when the regulation was repealed, and subordinate Lodges
were permitted to confer these two Degrees (see Middle Chamber
Lecture and the Dew Drop Lecture).
FELLOW CRAFT PERFECT ARCHITECT

The French expression being Compagnon Parfait
Architect. The Twenty-sixth Degree of the Rite of Mizraim. There
are several other Degrees which, like this, are so called, not
because they have any relation to the original Second Degree of
Symbolic Freemasonry, but to indicate that they constitute the
second in any particular series of Degrees which are preparatory
to the culmination of that series.

Thus, in the Rite of Mizraim, we have the
Master Perfect Architect, which is the Twenty-seventh Degree,
while the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth are Apprentice and Fellow
Craft Perfect Architect. So we have in other rites and systems
the Fellow Craft Cohen, Hermetic, and Cabalistic Fellow Craft,
where Master Cohen and Hermetic and Cabilistic Master are the
topmost Degrees of the different series. Fellow Craft in all these,
and many other instances like them, means only the second preparation
toward perfection.
FELLOWS, COLONEL JOHN

The author of An Exposition of the Mysteries,
or Religious Dogmas and Customs of the ancient Egyptians, Pythagoreans,
and Druids, also an Inquiry into the Origin, History, and Purport
of Freemasonry, New York, 1835. A similar volume published at
London in 1857 and followed by other editions in 1860, 1866, 1871,
and 1880, was entitled The Mysteries of Freemasonry. Moncure D.
Conway, biographer of Thomas Paine, credits Colonel Fellows with
the authorship of the preface to Paine's essay on Freemasonry.
FELLOWSHIP, FIVE POINTS OF

See Points of Fellowship, Five
FELLOWSHIP OF MASONS

See Masons, Company of
FELLOW OF THE CRAFT

The word "fellow" derived from
early northern languages; the central meaning which persisted
from one language or dialect to another was that of associate,
one in full and equal membership. There are indications that the
word first entered our nomenclature in Scotland, but the status
or grade thus named was as old as Freemasonry.

In Medieval Freemasonry an Apprentice served
a long period of years as a learner or student. He was under oath
to the Lodge to obey its rules and regulations; and he was indentured
or bonded to a Master. Data belonging to the Transition period
suggest that formal papers of indenture were drawn under seal
and signed by the youth's father or guardianone Scottish
Lodge admitted a lawyer for that express purpose. During the years
of apprenticeship the youth acted as a servant to his master,
lived in a dormitory or in his master's home (whence the old "oaths
of chastity," etc.), received food and clothing; but worked
without pay, and if an Apprentice's work was sold his master received
the money.

At the end of his term, usually of seven
years, he was "released from his indentures" and was
made a fellow, or full member, of the Craft. As regards his art
he was a master mason; as regards his status or grade he was a
fellow. He could have an apprentice of his own; was paid wages;
had a voice and a vote and could hold office; he could go to other
communities or to other countries to work. He was "free of
the gild." Such a man was called "journeyman" very
frequently.

This word itself may have carried two meanings
at once, as words often do: in its French usage it meant "worker
by the day" it also probably meant "jour neying Masons,"
fellows who could travel; and in some periods newly-made fellows
made it a rule to travel, working in one place after another in
order to perfect their knowledge, during the first two years.
The highest positions in the Craft, the best-paid and the most
honored, were the officers, the Master of Masons in particular,
supervisors, administrators, overseers, etc. Also, one experienced
Mason might employ a number of Masons with their apprentices;
he was the Master and they were journeymen. The word "master"
therefore could mean a workman who had mastered the art, the chief
officer of a Lodge, an employer, a supervisor, etc. As regards
the art he was on a level with fellows; as regards official standing
he was in a grade above them.

There was in Medieval Freemasonry
a wealth of ritualism, ceremony, symbolismthis could be
said with safety even if there were no records, because in the
Middle Ages, when almost every special form of work was separately
organized, the gilds and fraternities were saturated with ritualism
and symbolism even the gilds of yeomen, often consisting of farm
laborers, and at the bottom of social classes, had their rites;
but in the sense of the word as now used there were no Degrees
in Medieval Freemasonry. There were, however, the germs or beginnings
of what became Degrees in Speculative Freemasonry; the apprentice
was examined, sworn, charged, etc. and it is almost certain that
he was again sworn, charged, etc., before his raising to the status
of fellow. In the Medieval period there were in the Lodges practices
and customs both operative and speculative, with the major emphasis
on the former; during the Transition Period the movement was away
from the operative to the speculative; after 1717-1735 only the
speculative remained. The work of the Lodge was no longer organized
primarily for sake of the daily work of the members; it became
organized around the teachings, rites, ceremonies, symbols, fellowship.
In consequence there came into existence three separate Degreesin
reality they are Lodges, because each meets separately, has its
own officers, and conducts its own business, and in the By-laws
and Minutes is described as a Lodge.

The first Speculative Lodges went to extreme
lengths to conceal their esoteric work; the Grand Lodge kept no
Minutes for a number of years, and the Minutes of a local Lodge
consisted of only one or two bare entries. Few facts are known
about the Ritual of that period. There were, however, at least
two parts, or sets of ceremonies, one for Apprentices, one for
Fellows; a Lodge sat first as a Lodge of Apprentices, and then
as a Lodge of Fellows.

There could have been no proficiency tests
because in thousands of known cases a Candidate received the two
ceremonies in one evening. After some fifteen years or so, separate
Master's Lodges were set up; apparently these were for Worshipful
Masters, Past Masters, and "virtual" Past Masters who
had received a ceremony called ''passing the Chair." There
was no official, uniform Work. As time passed the "amount
of Ritual material" increased, and this must have been especially
true f the Ritual of the Masters' Lodges. In the next stage, so
the meagre records suggest, this Masters' Ritual was divided in
two; one part becoming a separate Master Mason Degree, the other
the Royal Arch Degree. The Master Mason Degree, connected faith
the first two, came under the jurisdiction of the Lodge; the Royal
Arch was made over to the Chapter. It may be that this outline
of events was not true of some particular Lodge (a number of them
did not have the use of separate Masters' Lodges) but it is a
reasonable summarization of the few data and hints which are available.

In the seven or eight centuries of Masonic
history the phrase "Fellow of the Craft" has thus had
a number of separate meanings: a craftsman free from his indentures
of apprenticeship; a full member of the Lodge; a Master of the
Mason art; a journeyman Mason (in both senses); in the first period
of Speculative Masonry, a full-fledged Freemason (he had been
made a Mason"); in the later period, a Mason with a half-way
status between Apprentice and Master; and the name of the Second
Degree (or, rather, Lodge).

NOTE. The Constitutions of 1723 provided
that Apprentices could be made FellowsandMasters only
in Grand Lodge except by dispensation; this attempt to rob Lodges
of their ancient right to make Masons was so vigorously protested
that in 1725 Grand Lodge ordained that "particular Lodges"
could "make Masters at discretion"; the Grand Lodge
itself was then using "fellows" and masters" interchangeably.
Scottish Lodges were a full generation behind England in adopting a tri-gradal system.

One of the possibilities is that what became
the Masters' Degree had been a portion of the Fellow Craft Work
but that the latter had given it only as a lecture in interpretation
of symbols on the Tracing Board, whereas in the Masters' Lodges
it was enacted in full, and in costume. In 1764 Old Dundee Lodge
Minutes have "made a Mason" and "raised a Master."
They unquestionably distinguished between "Mason" and
"Master."
FEMALE FREEMASONRY

See adoptive Freemasonry
FEMALE FREEMASONS

The landmarks of Speculative Freemasonry
peremptorily exclude females from any active participation in
its mysteries. But there are a few instances in which the otherwise
unalterable rule of female exclusion has been made to yield to
the peculiar exigencies of the occasion; and some cases are well
authenticated where this Salic law has been violated from necessity,
and females have been permitted to receive at least the First Degree.
The Salic regulation, law of the Salian Franks excluded women
from the throne of France. Such, however, have been only the exceptions
which have given confirmation to the rule (see Aldworth, Beaton,
and Yaintrailles).
FENCING THE LODGE

The name of an old ceremony in the Scottish
Operative Lodges. There was prayer to God for power to impartially
deal with what might be brought before the Brethren and there
was also a solemn obligation that all the participants should
be purged of the evils of prejudice and injustice in making their
decisions (see also Purging the Lodge).
FENDEURS

More fully in French, L'Ordre des Ferdeurs,
meaning the Order of Woodcutters, was a secret society, established
at Paris in 1743, by the Chevalier Beauchaine.

The Lodge represented a forest, and was
generally held in a garden. It was androgynous, for both sexes,
and held secret signs and words, and an allegorical language borrowed
from the profession of woodcutting.
The Abbe Barruel (tome ii, page 350, edition
of 1797) thought that the Order originated in the forests among
the actual woodcutters, and that many intelligent inhabitants
of the city having united with them, the operative business of
felling trees was abandoned and Philosophic Lodges were establisheda
course of conversion from Operative to Speculative precisely like
that, he says, which occurred in Freemasonry, and this conversion
was owing to the number of Fendeurs who were also Freemasons.
A complete ritual of the Fendeurs is given in the Transactions
of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume xxu, pages 37-52).
FENDEURS, ORDER OF

Ordre des Fendeurs et Fendeuses.
Also known as the Forest Masons.
A French Order accepting both men and women as members, though
not necessarily connected with the Masonic Fraternity. They traced
their Order back to the time of Alexander the Great. They were,
in all probability, a branch of the Carbonari, or Charcoal Burners,
a political league which made its appearance in the twelfth century.
In 1747 there was a revival of this society and it became popular
with ladies and gentlemen of high rank and distinction. Meetings
were held in rooms decorated to represent a forest or in the summer
time, when the weather permitted, the meetings were held outdoors.
In their ritual they used implements connected with woodcutting,
such as axes, logs, tree stumps, stone cups, whistles, and their
regalia included a carpenter's apron and a russet-colored sash
edged with green. The Master was called Pére Maître
or Parent Master, and the other offices were Cousin Hermit, Cousin
Winedresser, Cousin Bear, Cousin Elm, Cousin Oak, and so forth.
A woman candidate was called a Briquette and a man, Briquet.
FERDINAND IV
This King of the two Sicilies, on the 12th
of September, 1775, issued an edict forbidding the meeting of
Freemasons in Lodges in his dominions, under penalty of death.
In 1777, at the solicitation of his queen, Caroline, this edict
was repealed, and Freemasonry was once more tolerated; but in
1781 the decree was renewed.
FERDINAND VI

In 1751, Ferdinand VI, King of Spain, at
the solicitation of Joseph Torrubia, Visitor of the Holy Inquisition,
enforced in his dominions the Bull of excommunication of Pope
Benedict XIV, and forbade the congregation of Freemasons under
the highest penalties of law. In the Journal of Freemasonry, Vienna,
1784 (pages 176-224), will be found a translation from Spanish
into German of Torrubia's Act of Accusation, which gave rise to
this persecution.
FERDINAND VII

The King of Spain who bore this title was
one of the greatest bigots of his time. He had no sooner ascended
the throne in 1814, than he reestablished the Inquisition, which
had been abolished by his predecessor, prescribed the exercise
of Freemasonry, and ordered the Closing of all the Lodges, under
the heaviest penalties. In September following, twenty-five persons,
among whom were several distinguished noblemen, were arrested
as "suspected of Freemasonry." On March 30, 1818, a
still more rigorous edict was issued, by which those convicted
of being Freemasons were subjected to the most severe punishments,
such as banishment to India and confiscation of goods, or sometimes
death by a cruel form of execution. But the subsequent Revolution
of 1820 and the abolition of the Inquisition removed these blots
from the Spanish records.
FERNOW, KARL LUDWIG

Painter and author on ancient art, was born on November 19, 1763,
at Pomerania, Germany; was at Rome from 1795 and lectured there
on archaeology; returning to Germany, 1802, he became a professor
of Italian literature at Sena; then in 1804 was librarian for
the Duchess Amalia at Weimar. Fernow was a member of the Lodge
Arrmlia, which honored his memory by a special assembly in 1809,
he having died on December 4, 1808.
FERRY, JULES FRANÇOIS CAMILLE

A French statesman, born at Saint Dié,
April 5, 1832, studied law, entered politics at Paris, protested
against war of 1870 but administered that city during the siege
by the German army. Twice Premier, he had been Minister of Education
and Minister of Foreign Affairs; in the latter positions he organized
public education on a non-clerical basis and provided for colonial
growth. He made elementary education free, obligatory, and non-clerical,
and urged the destruction of church control in the University
and the removal from religious orders of a right to teach. Violent
attacks made upon him ended in his death on March 17, 1893, from
a pistol shot. He was an associate of Emile Littré and
Leon Gambetta and in company with them affiliated with the Masonic
Lodge La Clemente Amitie at Paris on July 8, 1875.
FERVENCY

From the middle eighteenth century, ardent
devotion to duty, fervor or fervency, was taught as a Masonic
virtue in the lectures of the First Degree, and symbolized by
charcoal, because, as later instructions say, all metals were
dissolved by the fervor of ignited charcoal. Subsequently, in
further Degrees, fervency and zeal were symbolized by the color
scarlet, which is the appropriate tincture of Royal Arch Masonry.
FESSLER, IGNAZ AURELIUS

A distinguished German writer and Masonic
reformer, who was born at Czurendorf, in Hungary, in 1756. He
was the son of very poor parents. His mother, who was a bigoted
Catholic, had devoted him to a monastic life, and having been
educated at the Jesuit School of Raab, he took holy orders in
1772, and was removed to the Capuchin monastery in Vienna. In
consequence, however, of his exposure to the Emperor Joseph II
of monastic abuses, he incurred the persecutions of his superiors.
But the emperor, having taken him under his protection, nominated
him, in 1783, as ex-professor of the Oriental languages in the
University of Lemberg. But the monks having threatened him with
legal proceedings, he fled to Breslau in 1788, where he subsequently
was appointed the tutor of the son of the Prince of Corolath.
Here he established a secret order, called by him the Evergreen,
which bore a resemblance to Freemasonry in its organization, and
was intended to effect moral reforms, which at the time he thought
Freemasonry incapable of producing. The Order, however, never
really had an active existence, and the attempt of Fessler failed
by the dissolution, in 1793, of the society. In 1791 he adopted
the Lutheran faith, and, having married, settled in Berlin, where
until 1806, he was employed as a superintendent of schools. He
wrote during this period several historical works, which gave
him a high reputation as an author.

But the victorious progress of the French
army in Prussia caused him to lose his official position. having
been divorced from his wife in 1802, he again married, and retiring
in 1803 from Berlin, betook himself to the quietude of a country
life. Becoming now greatly embarrassed in pecuniary matters, he
received adequate relief from several of the German Lodges, for
which he expressed the most lively gratitude. In 1808 he accepted
the position of a professor in the University of St. Petersburg,
which, however, he was soon compelled to relinquish in consequence
of the intrigues of the clergy, who were displeased with his liberal
views.

Subsequently he was appointed superintendent
of the evangelical community, over nine Russian departments, and
Ecclesiastical President of the Consistory at Saratow, with a
large salary. In 1827, on the invitation of the Emperor Alexander,
he removed permanently to St. Petersburg, where, in 1833, he received
the appointment of Ecclesiastical Counselor, and died there December
15, 1839, at the advanced age of eighty-three years.

Fessler was initiated in Freemasonry at
Lemberg, in 1783, and immediately devoted himself to the study
of its science and history. In June, 1796, he affiliated with
the Lodge Royal York, zur Freundschaft, in Berlin, and having
been made one of its Sublime Council, was invested with the charge
of revising and remodeling the entire ritual of the Lodge, which
was based on the advanced Degrees of the French system. To the
accomplishment of this laborious task, Fessler at once, and for
a long time afterward, devoted his great intellect and his indefatigable
energies. In a very short period he succeeded in a reformation
of the symbolic Degrees, and finding the Brethren unwilling to
reject the high Degrees, which were four in number, then practiced
by the Lodge, he remodeled them, retaining a considerable part
of the French ritual, but incorporated with it a portion of the
Swedish system. The work thus accomplished met with general approbation.
In his next task of forming a new Constitution he was not so successful,
although at length he induced the Royal York Lodge to assume the
character and rank of a Grand Lodge, which it did in 1798, with
seven subordinate Lodges under its obedience. Again Fessler commenced
the work of a revision of the ritual.

He had always been opposed to the high Degree
system. He proposed, therefore, the abolition of everything above
the Degree of Master. In this, however, he was warmly opposed,
and was compelled to abandon his project of reducing German Free
masonry to the simplicity of the English system. Yet he was enabled
to accomplish something, and had the satisfaction, in 1800, of
metamorphosing the Elu, the Ecossais, and the Rose Croix, of the
old ritual of the Royal York Lodge into the "degrees of knowledge,
" which constitute the System known as the Rite of Fessler.
In 1798, Fessler had been elected Deputy Grand Master when there
were but three Lodges under the Grand Lodge. In 1801, by his persevering
activity the number had been increased to sixteen. Still, notwithstanding
his meritorious exertions in behalf of Freemasonry, he met with
that ingratitude, from those whom he sought to serve, which appears
to be the fate or almost all Masonic reformers. In 1802, wearied
with the opposition of his antagonists, he renounced all the offices
that he had filled, and resigned from the Grand Lodge. Thenceforth
he devoted himself in a more retired way to the pursuits of Freemasonry.

Before Fessler resigned, he had conceived
and carried out the scheme of establishing a great union of scientific
Freemasons, who should devote themselves to the investigation
of the history of Freemasonry. Of this society Mossdorf, Fischer;
and many other distinguished Freemasons, were members (see Scientific
Masonic Association).

Fessler's contributions to the literature
of Freemasonry were numerous and valuable. His chief work was
An Atternpt to Furnish a Critical History of Freemasonry and the
Masonic Fraternity from the earliest times to the year 1802. This
work was never printed, but only loaned in four folio manuscript
volumes at the price of £30, say about $135, in present-day
ratios, to persons who pledged themselves eventually to return
it. It was a mistake to circumscribe the results of his researches
within so narrow a field. But he published many other works. His
productions were mostly historical and judicial, and made a great
impression on the German Masonic mind. His collected works were
published in Berlin, from 1801 to 1807, but unfortunately, they
have never been translated into English. The object of all he
wrote was to elevate Freemasonry to the highest sphere of intellectual
character.
FESSLER, RITE OF

This Rite, which was prepared by Fessler
at the request of the Grand Lodge Royal York of Berlin, consisted
of nine Degrees, as follows:

1. Entered Apprentice
2. Fellow Craft.
3. Master Mason. These three differ but slightly from the same
Degrees in all the Rites, and are followed by six other Degrees,
which he called the higher knowledge, namely:

4. The Holy of Holies. This Degree is occupied in a critical exposition
of the various hypotheses which have been proposed as to the origin
of Freemasonry; as, whether it sprang from the Templars, from
the Cathedral of Strasburg, from the Rose Croix of the seventeenth
century, from Oliver Cromwell, from the Cathedral of Saint Paul's
at London, from that of the Palace of Kensington, or from the
Jesuits.

5. Justification. Critical examination of the origin of certain
of the advanced Degrees, such as the Ecossais and the Chapter
of Clermont.

6. Celebration. Critical examination of the four following systems:
Rose Croix, Strict Observance, African Architects, and Initiated
Brothers of Asia.

7. True Light. Critical examination of the Swedish System, the
System of Zinnendorf, the Royal Arch of England, of the succession
of the Mysteries, and of all systems and their ramifications.
<

8. The Country. Examination of the origin of the Mysteries of
the Divine Kingdom, introduced by Jesus of Nazareth; of the exoteric
doctrines communicated by him immediately to his disciples, and
of those which sprang up after his death, up to the time of the
Gnosties. 9. Perfection. A complete critical history of all Mysteries
comprehended in actual Freemasonry.

Both Clavel and Ragon say that the rituals
of these Degrees were drawn up from the work of the Golden Rose
Croix, of the Rite of Strict Observance, of the Illuminated Chapter
of Sweden, and the Ancient Chapter of Clermont. Fessler's Rite
was, perhaps, the most abstrusely learned and philosophical of
all the Masonic systems; but it did not have a long existence,
as it was abandoned by the Grand Lodge, which had at first accepted
it, for the purpose of adopting the Ancient York Rite under the
Constitutions of England.
FESTIVALS

The heathen were delighted with the festivals
of their gods, and unwilling to part with these delights, and
therefore, Gregory Thaumaturgus, who died in 265, and was Bishop
of Neocaesarea, to facilitate their conversion instituted annual
festivals to the saints and martyrs. Hence it came to pass that,
for exploding the festivals of the heathens, the principal festivals
of the Christians succeeded in their room: as the keeping of Christmas
with joy, and feasting, and playing, and sports, in the room of
the Bacchinatia and Satumlia; the celebrating of May day with
flowers, in the room of the floral and the keeping of festivals
to the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and divers of the apostles,
in the room of the solemnities at the entrance of the sun into
the signs of the Zodiac in the old Julian Calendar.

The Freemasons, borrowing from and imitating
the usage of the Church, have also always had their festivals
or days of festivity and celebration. The chief festivals of the
Operatives or Stonemasons of the Middle Ages were those of Saint
John the Baptist on June 24, and the Four Crowned Martyrs on the
8th of November. The latter was, however, discarded by the Speculative
Freemasons; and the festivals now most generally celebrated by
the Fraternity are those of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, and
Saint John the Evangelist, December 27. These are the days kept
in the United States. Such, too, was formerly the case in England;
but the annual festival of the Grand Lodge of England now falls
on the Wednesday following Saint George's day, April 23, that
Saint being the patron of England. For a similar reason, Saint
Andrew's day, November 30, is kept by the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
In Ireland the festival kept is that of Saint John on December
27.
FEUILLANS

An androgynous, both sexes, system, found
in Fustier's collection, and governed by the statutes of Saint
Bernard.
FEUILLANTS, or DAMES PHLEIADES

An organization established about the middle
of the eighteenth century in Brittany, France. The grip was given
by shaking hands with the fingers interlaced three times reciprocally.
The sign was made by the hands being raised to a level with the
eyes, the palms turned upwards with the fingers interlaced.
The pass-words were
Have you gathered the roses?
The correct response was
Also the grapes.
FIAT LUX ET LUX FIT

A Latin motto frequently written Sit Lux
et Lux Fuit, referring to Genesis(I, 3), "Let there be light,
and there was light" (see True Light).
FIDELITY

See Fides
FIDELITY OF BADEN DURLACH, ORDER OF

Instituted in 1716 by Charles Margrave of
Baden Durlach. The members of the Order were knighted, selections
being made only from the nobles of ancient family. The reigning
princes were hereditary Grand Masters.
FIDES

In the instruction of the First Degree,
it is said that "our ancient Brethren worshiped deity under
the name of Fides or Fidelity, which was sometimes represented
by two right hands joined, and some times by two human figures
holding each other by the right hands." The deity here referred
to was the goddess Fides, to whom Numa first erected temples,
and whose priests were covered by a white veil as a symbol of
the purity which should characterize Fidelity. No victims were
slain on her altars, and no offerings made to her except flowers,
wine, and incense. Her statues were represented clothed in a white
mantle, with a key in her hand and a dog at her feet. The virtue
of Fidelity is, however, frequently symbolized in ancient medals
by a heart in the open hand, but more usually by two right hands
clasped.
Horace calls her Incorrupta Fides, and makes
her the sister of Justice; while Cicero says that which is religion
toward God and piety toward our parents is fidelity toward our
fellow-men. There was among the Romans another deity called Fidius,
who presided over oaths and contracts, a very usual form of imprecation
or oath being Me dius fidius adjured that is, so help me the God
Fidius. Noel (Dictionary of Fables) says that there was an ancient
marble at Rome consecrated to the god Fidius, on which was depicted
two figures clasping each other's hands as the representatives
of Honor and Truth, without which there can be no fidelity nor
truth among men. Freemasonry, borrowing its ideals from the ancient
poets, also makes the right hand the symbol of Fidelity.
FIDUCIAL SIGN

That is, the sign of confiding trust, called
also the sign of Truth and Hope. One of the signs of the English
Royal Arch system, which is thus explained by Doctor Oliver (Dictionary
of Symbolic Masonry). The fiducial sign shows us if we prostrate
ourselves with our face to the earth, we thus throw ourselves
on the mercy of our Creator and Judge, looking forward with humble
confidence to his holy promises, by which alone we hope to pass
through the Ark of our redemption into the mansion of eternal
bliss and glory to the presence of Him who is the great I AM,
the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the lending, the First
and the Last.
FIELD LODGE, or ARMY LODGE

A Lodge duly instituted under proper authority
from a Grand Body of competent jurisdiction, and authorized to
exercise during its peripatetic existence all the powers and privileges
that it might possess if permanently located. 6 Charters of this
nature, as the name implies, are intended for the tented field,
and have been of the no greatest service to humanity in its trying
hours, when the worst of passions are appealed.
FIFTEEN

A sacred number symbolic of the name of
God, because the letters of the holy name xs, Jah, are equal,
in the Hebrew mode of numeration by the letters of the alphabet,
to fifteen; for is equal to ten, and n is equal to five. Hence,
from veneration for this sacred name, the Hebrews do not, in ordinary
computations, when they wish to express the number fifteen, make
use of these two letters, but of two others, which are equivalent
to nine and six (see also Fourteen).
FIJI ISLANDS

See Oceania
FILLMORE: ANTI-MASON

President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874),
a native of Cayuga County, N.Y., was bonded as an apprentice to
a cloth-maker, and remained one for a number of years. (Historians
of the old apprenticeship system overlook the use of it in America;
it was continued here to a time within the memory of men still
living.) He was almost wholly self-educated. A lawyer friend,
Judge Walter Wood, tought his indentures, and took the young man
into his office. In 1821 he moved to Aurora, N.Y. (a name to be
made familiar in after years by Elbert Hubbard), and in 1823 was
admitted to the bar in nearby Buffalo. He was married in Aurora,
practiced law, and lived there until 1830. It was in that period
that he became an Anti-Mason (Morgan disappeared, or was kidnapped,
or murdered in 1826) in the political party of which he was to
become one of the three national leaders, along with Thurlow Weed
and William H. Seward. In 1828 he became a member (thanks to Weed)
of the State Assembly, where he belonged to the Anti-Masonic minority.
While in the Assembly Fillmore proved himself no mere bigot, and
he was one of the men who helped abolish the 18th Century British
system of imprisonment for debt (the United States was a long
time ridding itself of such anachronisms) and of religious tests
for witnesses. In 1833 he was elected to the U. S. Congress; since
with Weed and Seward he had by that time helped to vote the Anti-Masonic
Party ("the hollow party") out of existence, he went
to Washington as a man without a party, but in 1834 joined the
Whigs. He sat in the house a total of eight years; as Chairman
of the Ways and Means Committee he helped to appropriate $30,000
to assist Morse in developing the telegraph.

In 1848 he was elected Vice-President; upon
the death of Zachary Taylor he took the oath of office as President,
July 10, 1850. He signed the notorious Fugitive Slave Law and
the Compromise, both in 1850. Also, he experienced a change of
heart about Freemasonry (he had broken with Seward and Weed) for
he invited it to lay the corner-stone of the new wing of the Capitol,
so that the nation was given the bizarre spectacle of a President
originally sent to Washington as an Anti-Mason leading a procession
of Masons. In 1852 he lost the Whig nomination, and, to the nation's
astonishment, accepted the nomination by the American (or Know-nothing)
Party; it was a surprise to see a man who had begun his career
as an avowed enemy of secret societies now head the American Party,
which was a political secret society. Defeated, he retired from
politics, lived in Buffalo (the city which was to become the residence
of another President, Grover Cleveland!, was Chancellor of its
University, founded the Historical Society there, and died there
in 1874.

NOTE. That section of New York in which
Fillmore was born must lie not under a star but under a poltergeist,
for it has been the cradle of new religions and strange heresies
and a number of weird personalities: The Anti-Masonic Movement,
the Millerites, Mormonism Spiritualism, hypnotism as a religion,
etc.; possibly because for generations it was the cross-roads
of the nation for the great movements north and south and east
and west and the focus of many conflicting streams of immigration.

John Quincy Adams also was an Anti-Masonic
leader but after he left the Presidency. John Adams almost became
one in 1801. As it turned out in the end the whole country found
that it had formed a wholly erroneous opinion of the Craft, taking
it to be something it never was; for this the Craft itself was
partly responsible because it published nothing by which the nation
could know it character and purposes. Masons who still (a few
of them take the grounds that Masonry should maintain a complete
silence forget that both a people and a government have a right
to know what they are harboring in the form of a powerful society
of three million men.
FINANCES

According to universal usage on Freemasonry,
the Treasurer of the Lodge or other Body is the banker or depositary
of the finances of the Lodge. They are first received by the Secretary,
who receipts for them, and immediately pays them over to the Treasurer.
The Treasurer distributes them under the orders of the Master
and the consent of the Lodge. This consent can only be known officially
to him by the statement of the Secretary, and hence all orders
drawn on the Treasurer for the disbursement of money should be
countersigned by the Secretary.
FINCH, WILLIAM

A Masonic charlatan, or fraud, who flourished
at the end of the preceding and the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Finch was a tailor in Canterbury, who, having been expelled
for some misconduct by the Grand Lodge, commenced a system of
practical Freemasonry on his own account, and opened a Lodge in
his house, where he undertook to initiate candidates and to give
instructions in Freemasonry. He published a great number of pamphlets,
many of them in a cipher of his own, which he pretended were for
the instruction of the Fraternity. Among the books published by
him are: A Masonic Treatise, with an Elucidation on the Religious
and Moral Beauties of Freemasonry, etc.; printed at Canterbury
in 1802. The Lectures, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Holy Arch Degree
of Freemasonry, etc., Lambeth, 181. The Origin of Freemasons,
etc.; London, 1816.

Finch found many dupes, and made a great
deal of money. But having on one occasion been sued by an engraver
named Smith, for money due for printing his plates, Finch pleaded
an offset of money due by Smith for initiation and instruction
in Freemasonry. Smith brought the Grand Secretary and other distinguished
Freemasons into court, who testified that Finch was an impostor.
In consequence of this exposure, Finch lost credit with the community,
and, sinking into obscurity, died sometime after, in abject poverty.

As it is impossible to read Finch's Treatises
without a knowledge of the cipher employed by him, the following
key will be found useful. We owe it to the researches of Brother
H. C. Levander (Freemasons Magazine and Review, 1859, page 490).
In the first part of the book the cipher used is formed by reversing
the alphabet, writing z for a, by for b, etc. The cipher used
the title-page differs somewhat from this, as will be seen from
the following:

In the second part of the work, a totally
different system is employed. The words may be deciphered by taking
the last letter, then the first, then the last but one, then the
second, and so on. Two or three words are also often run into
one; for example erectemhdrdoh, is he ordered them. The nine digits,
the Arabic numerals, 1 to 9, represent certain words of frequent
recurrence, a repetition of the same digit denoting the plural;
thus stands for Lodge; 11, for Lodges; 3, Fellow Craft; 33, Fellow
Crafts, etc.
FINDEL. J. G

A Masonic writer of more than ordinary note,
who was admitted in the Lodge Eleusis zur Verschwiegenheit (relating
to the secrecy discretely followed at Eleusis, the place in Greece
of the famous Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone), at Baireuth
in 1856. He was editor of the Bauhütte, or Craft Lodged an
interesting journal, at Leipsic, in 1858, and added materially
to Masonic literature in founding the Verein Deutscher Freimaurer,
Union of German Freemasons about 1860, and publishing, in 1874,
Geist unit Form der Freimaurerei, Genius and Form of Freemasonry.

His best known and most important work is
his Geschichte der Freimaurerei or General History of Freemasonry,
published in 1861, which has been translated into English, Freneh,
and other languages, and was the first attempt at a critical history
of the Craft. He died in 1905.
FINES

Fines for nonattendance or neglect of duty
are not now usually imposed in Masonic Bodies, because each member
is bound to the discharge of these duties by a motive more powerful
than any that could be furnished by a pecuniary penalty. The imposition
of such a penalty would be a tacit acknowledgment of the inadequacy
of that motive, and would hence detract from its solemnity and
its binding nature. It cannot, however, be denied that the records
of old Lodges show that it was formerly a common custom to impose
fines for a violation of the rules.
FIRE
The French, in their Table Lodges, called
the drinking of a toast, feu or fire. The word is also applied
to the action immediately following the drinking of a toast in
British Lodges when a quaint little ceremonial is observed by
all the Brethren.
FIRE, PHILOSOPHERS

See Theosophists
FIRE, PILLAR OF

See Pillars of Cloud arms Fire
FIRE, PURIFICATION BY

See Purification
FIRE-WORSHIP

Of all the ancient religions, fire-worship
was one of the earliest next to Sabaism; the worship of the heavenly
bodies, and even of this it seems only have been a development,
as with the Sabaists the sun was deemed the Universal Fire. "Darius,"
says Quintus Curtius, "invoked the sun as Mithras, the sacred
and eternal fire." It was the faith of the ancient Magi and
the old Persians, still retained by their modern descendants the
Parsees. But with them it was not an idolatry. The fire was venerated
only as a visible symbol of the Supreme Deity, of the Creative
Energy, from Whom all things come, and to Whom all things ascend.
The flame darting upward to meet its divine original, the mundane
fire seeking an ascension to and an absorption into the celestial
fire, or God Himself, constituted what has been called the lame-secret
of the fire-worshipers. This religion was not only ancient, but
also universal. From India it passed over into Egypt, and thence
extended to the Hebrews and to the Greeks, and has shown its power
and prevalence even in modern thought. On the banks of the Nile,
the people did not, indeed, fall down like the old Persians and
worship fire, but they venerated the fire-secret and its symbolic
teaching.

Hence the Pyramids, pyr is Greek for fire, the representation
of ascending flame; and Hargrave Jennings shrewdly says that what
has been supposed to be a tomb, in the center of the Great Pyramid,
was in reality a depository of the sacred, ever-burning fire.
Monoliths were everywhere in antiquity erected to fire or to the
sun, as the type of fire. Among the Hebrews. the sacred idea of
fire, as something connected with the Divine Being, was very prominent.
God appeared to Moses in a flame of fire; he descended on Mount
Sinai in the midst of flames; at the Temple the fire ascended
from heaven to consume the burnt offering. Everywhere in Scripture,
fire is a symbol of the holiness of God. The lights on the altar
are the symbols of the Christian God.

The purifying power of fire
is naturally deduced from this symbol of the holiness of the element.
And in the advanced Degrees of Freemasonry, as in the ancient
institutions, there is a purification by fire, coming down to
us insensibly and unconsciously from the old Magian cultus. In
the Medieval ages there was a sect of fire-philosophers hilosophi
per ignem who were a branch of offshoot of Rosicrucianism, with
which Freemasonry has so much in common. These fire-philosophers
kept up the veneration for fire, and cultivated the fire-secret,
not as an idolatrous belief, but modified by their hermetic notions.
They were also called theosophists, and through them, or in reference
to them, we find the theosophic Degrees of Freemasonry, which
sprang up in the eighteenth century. As fire and light are identical,
so the fire, which was to the Zoroastrians the symbol of the Divine
Being, is to the Freemason, under the equivalent idea of light,
the symbol of Divine Truth, or of the Grand Architect.
FIRRAO, JOSEPH

A cardinal priest who, in 1738, published
the edict of Pope Clement XII against Freemasonry.
FIRST MASONIC OPERA

See Generous Freemason
FISH

The Greek word for fish is IZ0T2. Now these
five letters are the initials of the five words [Greek Letters],
that is, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Savior.
Hence the early Christians adopted the fish as a Christian symbol;
and it is to be found on many of their tombs, and was often worn
as an ornament. Clement of Alexandria, in writing of the ornaments
that a Christian may constantly wear, mentions the fish as a proper
device for a ring, as serving to remind the Christian of the origin
of his spiritual life, the fish referring to the waters of baptism.
The Vesica Piscis, which is an oval figure, pointed at both ends,
and representing the air bladder of a fish, was adopted, and is
still often used as the form of the seal of religious houses and
con-fraternities, Margoliouth (Vestiges of General Freemasonry,
45) says: "In former days, the Grand Master of our Order
used to wear a silver fish on his person; but it is to be regretted
that, amongst the many innovations which have been of late introduced
into the Society to conciliate the prejudices of some who cannot
consistently be members of it, this beautiful emblem has disappeared
"
FITZ; PETER, GEOFFREY

Anderson, 1738, shows this English Chief
Justice as Deputy Grand Master, or Chief Surveyor, under Peter
de Rupibus, Bishop of Dorchester, Grand Master, in the reign of
King John of England, until the death of Geoffrey, 1213.
FIVE

Among the Pythagoreans five was a mystical
number, because it was formed by the union of the first even number
and the first odd, rejecting unity; and hence it symbolized the
mixed conditions of order and disorder, happiness and misfortune,
life and death. The same union of the odd and even, or male and
female, numbers made it the symbol of marriage. Among the Greeks
it was a symbol of the world, because, says Diodorus, it represented
ether and the four elements. It was a sacred round number among
the Hebrews.

In Egypt, India. and other Oriental nations
says Gesenius, the five minor planets and the five elementary
powers were accounted sacred. It was the pentas of the Gnosties
and the Hermetic Philosophers; it was the symbol of their quintessence,
the fifth or highest essence of power in a natural body. In Freemasonry,
five is a sacred number, inferior only in importance to three
and seven. It is especially significant in the Fellow Craft's
Degree, where five are required to hold a Lodge, and where, in
the winding stairs, the five steps are referred to the orders
of architecture and the human senses. In the Third Degree we find
the reference to the five points of fellowship and their Symbol,
the five-pointed star. Geometry, too, which is deemed synonymous
with Freemasonry, is called the fifth science; and, in fact, throughout
nearly all the Degrees of Freemasonry, we find abundant allusions
to five as a sacred and mystical number.
FIVE-POINTED STAR

The five-pointed star, which is not to be
confounded with the blazing star, is not found among the old symbols
of Freemasonry; indeed, some writers have denied that it is a
Masonic emblem at all. It is undoubtedly of recent origin, and
was probably introduced by Jeremy Cross, who placed it among the
plates in the emblems of the Third Degree prefixed to his Hieroglyphic
Chart. It is not mentioned in the ritual or the lecture of the
Third Degree, but the Freemasons of the United States have, by
tacit consent, referred to it as a symbol of the Five Points of
Fellowship. The outlines of the five-pointed star are the same
as those of the pentalpha of Pythagoras, which was the symbol
of health. M. Jomard, in his Description de L'Egypte (tome viii,
page 423) says that the star engraved on the Egyptian monuments,
where it is a very common hieroglyphic, has constantly five points.
never more nor less.
FIVE POINTS

See Chromatic Calendar
FIVE POINTS OF FELLOWSHIP

See Points of Fellowship, Five
FIVE SENSES

The five senses of Hearing, Seeing, Feeling,
Tasting, and Smelling are introduced into the lecture of the Fellow
Craft as a part of the instructions of that Degree (see each word
in its appropriate place). In the earlier lectures of the eighteenth
century, the five senses were explained in the First Degree as
referring to the five who make a Lodge. Their subsequent reference
to the winding stairs, and their introduction into the Second
Degree, were modern improvements. As these senses are the avenues
by which the mind receives its perceptions of things exterior
to it, and thus becomes the storehouse of ideas, they are most
appropriately referred to that Degree of Freemasonry whose professed
object is the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge.
FIXED LIGHTS

In the old lectures of the eighteenth century,
the fired lights were the three windows always supposed to exist
in the East, South, and West. Their uses were, according to the
old instructions "to light the men to, at, and from their
work." In the modern lectures they have been omitted, and
their place as symbols supplied by the lesser lights.
FLAG CEREMONY

A formal reception of the National Flag
was especially frequent in all fraternal Bodies during the World
War and ceremonies of most impressive character were noted in
leading Masonic organizations as in the Grand Lodges of Iowa,
Indiana, and elsewhere.

The making of the first "Stars and
Stripes" is credited to Mrs. Elizabeth Ross of Philadelphia.
We have seen on the door posts of the old ancestral home of the
Washington's at Sulgrave Manor, England, two shields each bearing
three stars surmounting a horizontal bar or stripe. Doubtless
this had a suggestive force in designing the new flag.

When the National Flag is hung either horizontally
or vertically across a wall, the union (the stars on the blue
field or background) should be uppermost and to the flag's own
right, that is to the observer's left. When displayed from a staff
projecting horizontally or at an angle from a window sill or the
front of a building, the same rule should be followed. The union
should go down to the truck (as the peak or point of the staff
is called) unless the flag is at half-mast position. A Service
Flag was designed by Brother Robert L. Queisser, Captain, Fifth
Ohio Machine Gun Company, in honor of those in the military or
naval service. This flag was much used in the United States during
the World War. The flag had a center field of white with a red
border. On the white field blue stars were placed for those in
service, gold stars for the dead.

At the fifty-fourth annual session held
at Miami, Florida, May 1-3, 1928, of the Imperial Council, Nobles
of the Mystic Shrine, the Committee on Revision of Ritual reported
that some Temples were using elaborate and beautiful flag ceremonies.
In a great many cases bugle calls were used in connection with
the activities of the Color Guard and bands rendered patriotic
airs in keeping with the spirit of the occasion. Usually the National
Anthems were sung by the entire membership present. The Committee
submitted a minimum requirement to be made applicable to all the
Temples of the Order with the understanding that the following
simple ceremony might be developed and elaborated:

When the Color Guard, or Marshal, with his
assistants presents the Colors at the altar after the Temple has
been duly opened. the Potentate will cause the Nobility to come
to attention and salute. After the salute is rendered, the following
pledge will be recited in concert: "I pledge allegiance to
my flag, to the principles for which it stands. one Brotherhood
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The Color Guard will then escort the Colors
to their proper position while the Nobility continue at attention.
The Color Guard will then return to the altar and the Potentate
will seat the Temple.

The suggestion of the Committee was recommended
to the Subordinate Temples.
FLAMING SWORD

A sword whose blade is of a spiral or twisted
form is called by the heralds a flaming swords from its resemblance
to the ascending curvature of a flame of fire. Until very recently,
this was the form of the Tiler's sword. Carelessness or ignorance
has now in many Lodges substituted for it a common sword of any
form. The flaming sword of the Tiler refers to the flaming sword
which guarded the entrance to Paradise, as described in Genesis
(iii, 4): "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the
east of the garden of Eden cherubim's and a flaming sword which
turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life;" or,
as Raphall has translated it, "the flaming sword which revolveth,
to guard the way to the tree of life." In former times, when
symbols and ceremonies were more respected than they are now;
when collars were worn, and not ribbons in the buttonhole; and
when the standing column of the Senior Warden, and the recumbent
one of the Junior during labor, to be reversed during refreshment,
were deemed necessary for the complete furniture of the Lodge,
the cavalry sword was unknown as a Masonic implement, and the
Tiler always bore a flaming sword. It were better if we could
get back to the old customs.
FLEMING, DR. WALTER MILLARD

Established the Ancient Arabic Order of
the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in the United States. In 1867
Brother William J. Florence made a trip to the Old World and is
reported to have secured there useful information for the introduction
and establishment of the Shrine.

When he returned to the United States with
all the data obtainable he communicated the particulars to Doctor
Fleming, and thereby after further consultation with Brother Charles
T. McClenachan and other able Masonic ritualists, they prepared
the way to establish the Shrine in the United States. On June
16, 1871, Doctor Fleming, assisted by Brother Florence, conferred
the Degrees upon four Knights Templar and seven members of Aurora
Grata Consistory, Thirty-second Degree, and September 96, 1872,
the organization was effected and officers elected.

Doctor Fleming was born on June 13, 1838, in Portland, Maine,
and died at Mount Vernon, New York, September 9, 1913, being buried
in Kensico Cemetery. He was a prominent medical man; joined the
Masonic Fraternity February 13, 1869; was raised in Rochester
Lodge No. 660 of Rochester, New York. He removed his office and
residence to New York City and associated himself with Aurora
Grata Lodge of Perfection in 1870; received the Degrees of the
Consistory up to and including the Thirty-second Degree on May
31, 1871, and was given, on September 19, 1872, his Thirty-third
Degree. December 3, 1872, he affiliated with New York Lodge, No.
330, of New York City, he having demitted from his Rochester Lodge.
He was exalted in Lafayette Chapter, No. 207, Royal Arch Masons;
became a member of Adelphic Council, No. 7, Royal and Select Masters;
was knighted in Columbia Commandery No. 1, Knights Templar of
New York City, March 19, 1872, and was unanimously elected Eminent
Commander at the succeeding Conclave, April 15, 1872, which office
he retained four successive years. He founded and served as Illustrious
Potentate the Mecca Temple, originally named Gotham, which was
the first Temple established by the Shrine.

Mecca Temple received its Charter on September
26, 1872, and Brother Fleming held his original office from the
time of its inception until December, 1887. He was elected Grand
Imperial Potentate at the first Session of the Imperial Grand
Council of the Order, June 6, 1876, and retained this office until
June 14, 1886. The name Grand was after a time dropped from the
titles (see Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, pages
1973-83, for a detailed account of the Order of the Mystic Shrine.
See also Florence, William Jermyn, and Shrine).
FLOATS

Pieces of timber, made fast together with
rafters, for conveying burdens down a river with the stream. The
use of these floats in the building of the Temple is thus described
in the letter of King Hiram to Solomon: "And we will cut
wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we will bring
it to thee in flotes by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it
up to Jerusalem" (Second Chronicles ii, 16).
FLOCQUET

French Freemason and musician; composer
of the Te Deum (a term based on the opening words in Latin of
an early hymn, Te Deum Laudamus, we Praise Thee, O God, and often
applied to any thanksgiving song or service), which; the Mother
Lodge of the Scottish Philosophic Rite sang in 1781 at the Church
of Notre Dame, Paris, in honor of the birth of the Dauphin, the
first-born son of the King of France.
FLOOR

The floor of a properly constructed Lodge-room
should be covered with alternate squares of black and white, to
represent the Mosaic pavement which was the ground floor of King
Solomon's Temple.
FLOOR-CLOTH

A framework of board or canvas, on which
the emblems of any particular Degree are inscribed, for the assistance
of the Master in giving a lecture. It is so called because formerly
it was the custom to inscribe these designs on the floor of the
Lodge-room in chalk, which were wiped out when the Lodge was closed.
It is the same as the Carpet, Or Tracing-Board.

The washing out of the designs chalked upon
the floor is seen in the early caricatures of the Craft where
a mop and pail are illustrated. These would soon be put aside
when Lodges met in carpeted rooms. Then the symbols were shown
by marking out the Lodge with tape and nails or shaping the symbols
in wood or metal to be laid upon the floor or table or pedestal
as the case might be in the Lodge. Such use of separate symbols
we have seen in English Lodges, as at Bristol, where the ancient
ceremonies are jealously and successfully preserved.

An easy development would be to picture
the designs on a cloth to be spread out on floor when in use or
folded up for storage. Then there would be the further movement
to the stereopticon slides of a similar character, and which find
frequent use in the United States. Brother John Harris in 1820
designed and made a set of Tracing Boards for the three Degrees.
These designs were never authorized by the Grand Lodge of England,
the individual Lodges employed their own artists and the results
varied accordingly, though the influence of Brother Harris tended
to the uniformity that practically now prevails among Tracing-Board
makers. Articles of much interest and value on the subject are
"Evolution and Development of the Tracing or Lodge Board,"
by Brother E. H. Dring (Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge,
1916, volume xxix, pages 243 and 275), and "Some Notes on
the Tracing Board of the Lodge of Union, No. 3S," bar Brother
O. N. Wvatt (Transactions Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1910, volume
xxiii, page 191). The latter article refers particularly to the
work of Brother Josiah Bowring, a portrait painter of London,
also painted the Boards for the Chichester Lodge in 1811, himself
being initiated in 1795.
FLOORING

The same as Floor-cloth, which see
FLORENCE, WILLIAM J.

William J., or Billy, Florence was the professional
name used by William Jermyn Conlin, a popular actor, and a Freemason
whose name is romantically as well as practically associated with
the founding of the Ancient and Arabic Order of the Nobles of
the Mystic Shrine. This organization was doubtless erected upon
a ritual and ceremonies established and brought into being by
Brother Florence and his coworker, Dr. Walter M. Fleming, with
their immediate Masonic friends. Little of the actual detail of
the work at headquarters w as done by Florence himself, that being
left to Doctor Fleming, due to Brother Florence's enforced long
absences awhile touring the United States or foreign lands in
following his profession. He, however, lent his popular name to
the cause and enthusiastically contributed what assistance he
could to the propagation of the Order.

Brother Florence was born July 26, 1831,
at Albany, New Work. Adopted the stage as a profession and met
with immediate success and continuous popularity until the time
of his death, which occurred at the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia,
November l9, 1891. His body was interred in Greenwood Cemetery,
Protestant, in Brooklyn, in a plot which Florence had purchased
years before and which was the burial place of his mother, although
his wife was a Roman Catholic who had the last rites performed
over him by the priesthood of her choice in Saint Agnes Church.

Brother Charles Thomas McClenachan, Thirty-third Degree, and closely
associated with Brothers Florence and Fleming in the founding
of the Mystic Shrine, conferred the Scottish Rite up to and including
the Thirty-second Degree upon Brother Florence at the Metropolitan
Hotel, New York Cites April 21, 1867. This was just prior to Florence's
departure for Europe, on which trip he is said to have been
received into several organizations similar to the Shrine both
in France and Algiers. These visits of his M ere highly colored
by the imaginative Doctor Flemin, and used in the ritual which
was finally perfected, replete with oriental atmosphere and "regal
splendor," as he termed it. Frequent assertions! even by
Masonic authorities, have been made that Brother Florence was
not a Freemason. The facts are that he was initiated into the
Masonic Order in Philadelphia (see also One Hundred Years of
Aurora Grata, 1808-1908, page 47). Brethar Charles A. Brockaway
writes that he was a member of Mount Moriah Lodge, No. 155, Philadelphia;
Initiated, Crafted, and Raised October 12, 1853. Zerubbabel Chapter,
No. 162, 1854. Pittsburgh Commandery, No. 1, 1854.

Brother Brockaway
copies the following from the Minutes of Aurora Grata Lodge of
Perfection, Brooklyn, New York, of which he was Thrice Potent
Master:

At a special communication of Aurora Grata
Lodge of Perfection held at their rooms, Halsey's building, on
Tuesday evening, April 16, 67, Illustrious Brother C. T. McClenachan,
Thirty-third Degree, proposed Brother lV. J. Florence, Age 40,
Occupation Actor, Residence Metropolitan Hotel. Refers to Illustrious
Brother McClenachan and Illustrious Charles brown M.D., which
was on motion received and referred to lliustriols Brothers Willets,
Smith and McClennchan for investigation, who immediately reported
favorably and recommended his election. The T.P.G . M . then ordered
a ballot and Brother Florence was declared duly elected. Brother
Florence being about to depart for Europe and wishing to receive
the Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, permission was given
Illustrious Brother McClenachan to confer the Degrees upon him
as soon as convenient and wherever his judgment might dictate.

Noble Florence conferred the Degrees of
the Shrine upon Sam Briggs, who was Potentate of Al Ivoran Temple
from 1876 to 1901, and Imperial Potentate from 1886 to 1899, as
well as on Brenton D. Babcock and three other Clevelanders at
the Opera House and at the Rennard Hotel on October 91 and 00,
]876. When the Al Koran Temple of Cleveland was instituted, Florence
was an honored visitor, he having suggested its name.

William Winter's Wallat of Time, a history
of the American stage, contains a beautiful eulogy upon Florence,
stating that he was "in art admirable; in life gentle; he
was widely known, and he was known only to be loved.

By Virtue cherished, by Affection mourned
By Honor hallowed and by Fame adorned
Here Florence sleeps, and o'er his sacred rest
Each word is tender and each thought is blest.
Long, for his loss, shall pensive Memory show,
Through Humor's mask, the visage of her woe
Dale breathe a darkness that no sun dispels,
And Night be full of whispers and farewells;
While patient Kindness shadow-like and dim
Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him
Feels its sad doom and sure decadence high
For how should Kindness live, when he could die!
The eager heart, that felt for every grief;
The bounteous hand, that loved to give relief
The honest smile, that blest where'er it lit
The dew of pathos and the sheen of wit:
The sweet, blue eyes, the voice of melting tone
That made all hearts as gentle as his own;
The actor's charm, supreme in royal thrall
That ranged through every field and shone in all
For these must Sorrow make perpetual moan
Bereaved, benighted, hopeless and alone
Ah, no! for Nature does not yet amiss
And Heaven were lonely but for souls like this.

Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry
contains further details of this Brother and of the Shrine (see
chapter 107).
FLORIAN, SQUIN DE

The first accuser of Grand Master Jacques
deMolay and the Knights Templar. He was subsequently assassinated.
FLORIDA

The Grand Lodge of Scotland was petitioned
in March, 1768, for a Charter for Grants East Florida Lodge. When
this was issued Governor James Grant was appointed Provincial
Grand Master over the Lodges in the Southern District of North
America. This Grand Lodge, however, became extinct with the Spanish
succession at St. Augustine in 1786. Saint Andrew's Lodge, No.
1 then applied for authority to the Grand Lodge of Philadelphia
to continue the work;. In 1783 this Lodge came under the jurisdiction
of South Carolina, but in 1790 it became dormant and dropped from
the roll. On July 5, 1830, Jackson, Washington and Harmony Lodges
sent representatives to a Convention for forming a Grand Lodge
of Florida. A Constitution was framed and adopted on the following
day and the Grand Officers elected and installed.

Two Chapters,
Magnolias No. 16, and Florida, No. 32, were chartered in Florida
by the Grand Chapter of Virginia. and one at St. Augustine by
the Grand Chapter of South Carolina. Delegates from these three
Chapters met on January 11, 1847, and resolved to form a Grand
Chapter for Florida. On the 21st of the month they elected officers
and organized the Grand Chapter. After some delay, due to their
not having furnished particulars of the Chapters who took part
in the Convention, the General Grand High Priest was authorized
in 1856 to recognize the Grand Chapter of Florida.

For some years the Council Degrees were
conferred in the Chapters. Companion Albert G. Mackey then organized
a Council of Royal and Select Masters, Columbia Council at Lake
City. The records of this and of the establishment of two other
Councils were lost, but Companion Mackey, to whom an appeal for
dates was made, said that the probable date of Columbia Council
was 1852. At a meeting held at Tallahassee on January 12, 1868,
Columbia, Mackey and Douglas Councils opened a Grand Council and
appointed a Committee to draft a Constitution and By-Laws. These
were adopted the following day and Brother Thomas Hayward, then
Grand High Priest, was elected Grand Master.

A Dispensation was granted on March 17,
1851, to DeMolay Commandery, No. 1, at Quincy. When the hall of
this Commandery was destroyed by fire permission was given to
hold several meetings at Tallahassee. Representatives of five
Commanderies, namely, Coeur de Lion, No. 1; Damascus, No. 2; Olivet,
So. 4; Palatka, under Dispensation, and Plant City, under Dispensation,
took part in the organization of a Grand Commandery on August
15, 1895. The first introduction of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite to Florida was the establishment on October 19, 1892, of
the Ponce de Leon Lodge of Perfection, No. 3, at Ocala. On October
20, 1899, the McLean Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1, was opened,
and on October 24, 1901, the Bruce Council of Kadosh, No. 1, and
the Tampa Consistory, No. 1, began work.
FLUDD, ROBERT

Robert Fludd, or, as he called himself in
his Latin writings, Robertus de Fluctibus, was in the seventeenth
century a prominent member of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. He was
born in England in 1574, and having taken the degrees of Bachelor
and Master of Arts at Saint John's College, Oxford, he commenced
the study of physic, and in due time took the degree of Doctor
of Medicine. He died in 1637. In 1616, he commenced the publication
of his works and became a voluminous writer, whose subject and
style were equally dark and mysterious.

The most important of his publications are:
Apologia Compendaria, Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce. suspicionis
et infamioe maculis aspersum abluerus, published at Leyden, 1616.
The Latin title means:
A Brief apology, clearing the Fraternity
of the Rosy Cross from tile stigma of suspicion and infamy with
which they have been aspersed; and Tractatus Apoloqeticus integritatem
Societatis de Rosea Cruce defendens contra Libanium et alios,
Leyden, l617,and meaning in English An Apologetic Tract defending
the purity of the Society of the Rosy Cross from the attacks of
Libanius and others. And last. and wildest of all was his extravagant
work on magic, the cabala, alchemy, and Rosicrucianism, entitled
Summum bonum, quod est verum magioe, cabaoel, alchymioe, fratrum
Rosoe Crucis verorum veroe subjectum.

Rosicrucianism was perhaps indebted more
to Fludd than to any other person for its introduction from Germany
into England, and it may have had its influence in molding the
form of Speculative Freemasonry; but we are not prepared to go
as far as a distinguished writer in the London Freemasons Magazine
(April, 1858, page 677), who says that "Fludd must be considered
as the immediate father of Freemasonry as Andrea was its remote
father." Nicolai more rationally remarks that Fludd, like
Andrea, exerted a considerable and beneficial influence on the
manners of his age. His explanation of the Rose Croix is worth
quoting. He says that it symbolically signifies the cross dyed
with the blood of the Savior; a Christian idea which was in advance
of the original Rosicrucians.
FOLGER, ROBERT B

Author of a history of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite, New York, 1862, a second edition in l881. In 1852
he delivered an address to the memory of George Washington for
the members of Benevolent Lodge. Said to have been initiated in
the Fireman's Lodge, New York, in 1825, but in the introduction
to his book (page 12) mentions "the Latomia Society of Atlantic
Lodge, of which he (the author) is a member." The dedication
of the work is "To the Latomia Society of Atlantic Lodge
No. 178, Free and Accepted Masons, New York." Brother Folger
was a member of the medical profession.
FOLKES, MARTIN

From his acquaintance with Sir Christopher
Wren, and his intimacy with Doctor Desaguliers, Martin Folkes
was induced to take an active part in the reorganization of Freemasonry
in the beginning of the last century, and his literary attainments
and prominent position in the scientific world enabled him to
exercise a favorable influence on the character of the Institution.
He was descended from a good family, being the eldest son of Martin
Folkes, Counselor at Law, and Dorothy, the daughter of Sir William
Howell, of the County of Norfolk. He was born in Queen Street,
Leicester Inn Fields, Westminster, October 29, 1690. In 1707 he
was entered at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and in 1713 elected a Fellow
of the Royal Society, of which, in 1723, he was appointed vice-president.
In 1727, on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, he became a candidate
for the Presidency, in which he was defeated by Sir Hans Sloane,
who, however, renewed his appointment as Vice-president, and in
1741, on the resignation of Sloane as President, he was elected
his successor. In 1742 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy
of Sciences of Paris, and in 1746 received the degree of Doctor
of Laws from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

In 1750, he was elected President of the
Society of Antiquaries. To this and to the Royal Society he contributed
many essays, and published a work entitled, A Table of English
Silver Coins, which is still much esteemed as a numismatic authority.
On September 26, 1751, he was struck with paralysis, from which
he never completely recovered. On November 30, 1753, he resigned
the presidency of the Royal Society, but retained that of the
Society of Antiquaries until his death. In 1733, he visited Italy,
and remained there until 1735, during which time he appears to
have ingratiated himself with the Freemasons of that country,
for in 1742 they struck a medal in his honor, a copy of which
is to be found in Thory's History of the Foundation of the Grand
Orient of France. On one side is a pyramid, a sphinx, some Masonic
ciphers, and the two pillars, and on the obverse a likeness of
Folkes.

Of the Masonic life of Folkes we have but
few records. In 1725, he was appointed Deputy Grand Master of
the Grand Lodge of England, and is recorded as having paid great
attention to the duties of his office. Anderson says that he presided
over the Grand Lodge in May of that year, and "prompted a
most agreeable Communication" (see Constitutions, 1738, page
119). But he held no office afterward; yet he is spoken of as
having taken great interest in the Institution. Of his literary
contributions to Freemasonry nothing remains.

The Pocket Companion cites an address by
him, in 1725, before the Grand Lodge, probably at that very Communication
to which Anderson has alluded, but it is unfortunately no longer
extant. He died June 28, 1754, and was buried in the Chancel of
Hillington Church near Lynn, Norfolk. He left a wife and two daughters,
an only son having died before him.

Nichols, who knew him personally, says in
his Literary Anecdotes (ii, 591) of him: "His knowledge was
very extensive, his judgment exact and accurate, and the precision
of his ideas appeared from the perspicuity and conciseness of
his expression in his discourses and writings on abstruse and
difficult topics.... He had turned his thoughts to the study of
antiquity and the polite arts with a philosophical spirit, which
he had contracted by the cultivation of the mathematical sciences
from his earliest youth." His valuable library of more than
five thousand volumes was sold for £3090 at auction after
his decease.
FONTANES, MARQUIS LOUIS DE

Born at Niort, France, March 6, 1757; he
died at Paris, March 17, 1821. Poet and statesman; President of
the Corps Legislatif, head of the Imperial University and Senator
under Napoleon I; a member of the famous Lodge of Sine Sisters,
his name appears on the lists of members for 1783, 1784, and 1806
(see Une Loge Maçonnique, Louis Amiable, 1897, page 308).
Created a marquis and a peer by Louis XVIII.
FOOL

A fool, as one not in possession of sound
reason, a natural or idiot, is intellectually unfit for initiation
into the mysteries of Freemasonry, because he is incapable of
comprehending the principles of the Institution, and is without
any moral responsibility for a violation or neglect of its duties.
FOOTSTONE

The Corner-stone. To level the Footstone
means to lay the Corner-stone. Thus, Dr. George Oliver says "Solomon
was enabled to level the footstone of the Temple in the fourth
year of his reign."
FOOT TO FOOT

The old lectures of the eighteenth century descanted on the symbolism
of foot to foot as teaching us "that indolence should not
permit the foot to halt or wrath to turn our steps out of the
way; but forgetting injuries and selfish feelings, and remembering
that man was born for the aid of his fellow-creatures, not for
his own enjoyments only, but to do that which is good, we should
be swift to extend our mercy and benevolence to all, but more
particularly to a Brother Mason." The later lecture on the
same subject gives the same lesson more briefly and more emphatically,
when it says, owe should never halt nor grow weary in the service
of a Brother Mason. "
FORDS OF THE JORDAN

The slaughter of the Ephraimites at the
passages or fords of the River Jordan, which is described in the
twelfth chapter of the Book of Judges, is referred to in the Fellow
Craft's Degree. Brother Rob Morris, in his Freemasonry in the
Holy Land (page 316) says:

The exact locality of these fords or "passages
" as the Bible terms them, cannot now be designated, but
most likely they were those nearly due east of Seikoot and opposite
Mizpah. At these fords, in summer time, the water is not more
than three or four feet deep. the bottom being composed of a hard
limestone rock. If, as some think the fords, thirty miles higher
up, are those referred to the same description will apply. At
either place, the Jordan is about eighty feet wide, its banks
encumbered by a dense growth of tamarisks, cane, willows thorn-bushes,
and other low vegetation of the shrubby and thorny sorts, which
make it difficult even to approach the margin of the stream. The
Arabs cross the river at the present day, at stages of low water,
at a number of fords, from the one near the point where the Jordan
leaves the Sea of Galilee down to the Pilgrims' Ford, six miles
above the Dead Sea.

FOREIGN COUNTRY

A certain Degree lecture begins by declaring
that the recipient was induced to seek that sublime Degree "that
he might perfect himself in Masonry, so as to travel into foreign
countries, and work and receive wages as a Master Mason."
Thousands have often heard this expression
in connection with a Master's Lodge, without dreaming for a moment
of its hidden and spiritual meaning, or, if they think of any
meaning at all, they content themselves by interpreting it as
referring to the actual travels of the Freemasons, after the completion
of the Temple, into the surrounding countries in search of employment,
whose wages were to be the gold and silver which they could earn
by the exercise of their skill in the operative art.
But the true symbolic meaning of the foreign
country into which the Master Mason travels in search of wages
is far different. The symbolism of this life terminates with the
Master's Degree. The completion of that degree is the lesson of
death and the resurrection to a future life, where the True Word,
or Divine Truth, not given in this, is to be received as the reward
of a life worthily spent in its search Heaven, the future life,
the higher state of existence after death, is the foreign country
in which the Master Mason is to enter, and there he is to receive
his wages in the reception of that Truth which can be imparted
only in that better land.
FORESTERS DEGREES

This title has been given to certain secret
associations which derive their symbols and ceremonies from trades
practiced in forests, such as the Carbonari, or Charcoal-burners;
the Fendeurs. or Woodcutters; the Sawyers, etc. They are all imitative
of Freemasonry.
FOREST MASONS

See Fendeurs, Order of
FOREST OF LEBANON

See Lebanon
FORFEITURE OF CHARTER

A Lodge may forfeit its Charter for misconduct,
and when forfeited, the Warrant or Charter is revoked by the Grand
Lodge.
FORM

In Freemasonry, an official act is said
to be done, according to the rank of the person who does it, either
in ample form, in due form, or simply in form. Thus, when the
Grand Lodge is opened by the Grand Master in person, it is said
to be opened in ample form; when by the Deputy Grand Master, it
is said to be in due form; when by any other qualified officer,
it is said to be in form. The legality of the act is the same
whether it be done in form or in ample form; and the expression
refers only to the dignity of the officer by whom the act is performed
The terms Ample and Due Form appear to have been introduced by
Anderson in the 1738 edition of the Constitutions (page 110).
FORM OF THE LODGE

The form of a Freemason's Lodge is said
to be an oblong square, having its greatest length from east to
west, and its greatest breadth from north to south. This oblong
form of the Lodge, has, as Brother Mackey thought, a symbolic
illusion that has not been adverted to by any other writer. If,
on a map of the world, we draw lines which shall circumscribe
just that portion which was known and inhabited at the time of
the building of Solomon's Temple, these lines, running a short
distance north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, and extending
from Spain to Asia Minor, will form an oblong square, whose greatest
length will be from east to west, and whose greatest breadth will
be from north to south, as is shown in the annexed diagram.

There is a peculiar fitness in this theory,
which is really only making the Masonic Lodge a symbol of the
world. It must be remembered that, at the era of the Temple, the
earth was supposed to have the form of a parallelogram, or oblong
square. Such a figure inscribed upon a map of the world, and including
only that part of it which was known in the days of Solomon, would
present just such a square, embracing the Mediterranean Sea and
the countries lying immediately on its northern, southern, and
eastern borders. Beyond, far in the north, would be Cimmerian
deserts as a place of darkness, while the pillars of Hercules
in the west, on each side of the Straits of Gades now Gibraltar
might appropriately be referred to the two pillars that stood
at the porch of the Temple. Thus the world itself would be the
true Freemason's Lodge, in which he was to live and labor. Again:
the solid contents of the earth below, "from the surface
to the centre," and the profound expanse above, "from
the earth to the highest heavens," would give to this parallelogram
definition which says that "the form of the Lodge ought to
be a double cube, as an expressive emblem of the powers of light
and darkness in the creation."FORMULA

A prescribed mode or form of doing or saying
anything. The word is derived from the technical language of the
Roman law, where, after the old legal actions had been abolished,
suits were practiced according to certain prescribed forms called
formulae. Formulas in Freemasonry are very frequent. They are
either oral or monitorial. Oral formulas are those that are employed
in various parts of the ritual, such as the opening and closing
of a Lodge, the investiture of a candidate, etc. From the fact
of their oral transmission they are frequently corrupted or altered,
which is one of the most prolific sources of nonconformity so
often complained of by Masonic teachers. Monitorial formulas are
those that are committed to writing, and are to be found in the
various Monitors and Manuals. They are such as relate to public
installations, to laying foundation stones, to dedications of
halls, to funerals, etc. Their monitorial character ought to preserve
them from change; but uniformity is not even here always attained,
owing to the whims of the compilers of manuals or of monitors,
who have often unnecessarily changed the form of words from the
original standard.
FORT, GEORGE FRANKLIN

Masonic author. Born at Absecon, New Jersey,
November 20, 1848, and died at Atlantic City, March 30, 1909.
Edited the Keystone, Philadelphia, and wrote Early History and
Antiquities of Freemasonry, A Historical Treatise on Early Builders'
Marks, Medieval Builders, and other works of Masonic worth. Initiated
in Camden Lodge No. 15, Camden, New Jersey, a founder member and
second Master, 1871, of Trumble Lodge No. 117, also of Camden,
New Jersey (see Builder, 1918, pages 171 and 210).
FORT HIRAM

An earthwork erected on October 3, 1814,
at Fox Point, Rhode Island, by the Grand Lodge, with the members
of the subordinate Lodges, about two hundred and thirty in number.
The object was to build a fortification for the defense of the
harbor of Providence, and the Grand Lodge, of which Thomas Smith
Webb was Grand Master, through its Deputy, Senior Grand Warden,
and Worshipful Brother Carlisle, were authorized to work on the
defenses. They formed a procession, marched in the early morning
to the Point, and by sunset had completed their labors, consisting
of a breastwork four hundred and thirty feet in length, ten wide,
and five high. They then marched and countermarched upon the parapet
from one extremity to the other, when the Grand Master gave the
work the appellation of Fort Hiram, which was approved and sanctioned
by the Governor.
FORTITUDE

One of the four cardinal virtues, whose
excellencies are dilated on in the First Degree. It not only instructs
the worthy Freemason to bear the ills of life with becoming resignation,
"taking up arms against a sea of trouble," but, by its
intimate connection with a portion of our ceremonies, it teaches
him to let no dangers shake, no pains dissolve the inviolable
fidelity he owes to the trusts reposed in him. Or, in the words
of the old Prestonian lecture, it is "a fence or security
against any attack that might be made upon him by force or otherwise,
to extort from him any of our Royal Secrets."

Spence, in his Polymetis (page 139), when
describing the moral virtues! says of Fortitude: "She may
be easily known by her erect air and military dress, the spear
she rests on with one hand, and the sword which she holds in the
other. She has a globe under her feet; I suppose to shows that
the Romans, by means of this virtue, were to subdue the whole
world."
FORT MASONIC

A redoubt of the fortifications on what
was known as the Heights of Brooklyn, located between, what was
later, Bond and Nevins Streets, Brooklyn, the south point of the
quadrangle resting on State Street and extending north nearly
to Schermerhorn Street. This Fort Masonic was built by members
of the fourteen Lodges located in New York City, who, agreeable
to a resolution of the Grand Lodge, of which Brother De Witt Clinton
was Grand Master, adopted August 22, 1814, assembled at sunrise
on the morning of Thursday, September 1.

Accompanied by the officers of the Grand
Lodge, they proceeded to Brooklyn where they were joined by the
members of Fortitude and Newton Union Lodges, marched to the Height
and performed one day's work on the fortifications.

The redoubt not completed, however, until
September 17, when another day's labor was performed.
FORTY

The multiple of two perfect numbers four
and ten. This was deemed a sacred number, as commemorating many
events of religious signification, some of which are as follows:

The alleged period of probation of our first
parents in Eden; the continuous deluge of forty days and nights,
and the same number of days in which the maters remained upon
the face of the earth; the Lenten season of forty days' fast observed
by Christians with reference to the fast of Jesus in the Wilderness,
and by the Hebrews to the earlier desert fast for a similar period;
of the forty years spent in the Desert by Moses and Elijah and
the Israelites, which succeeded the concealment of Moses the same
number of years in the land of Midian. Moses was forty days and
nights on the Mount. The days for embalming the dead were forty.

The forty years of the reign of Saul, of
David, and of Solomon; the forty days of grace allotted to Nineveh
for repentance; the forty days' fast before Christmas in the Greek
Church; as well as its being the number of days of mourning in
Assyria, Phenicia, and Egypt, to commemorate the death and burial
of their Sun God; and as well the period in the festivals of the
resurrection of Adonis and Osiris; the period of forty days thus
being a bond by which the whole world, ancient and modern, Pagan,
Jewish, and Christian, is united in religious sympathy. Hence,
it was determined as the period of mourning by the Supreme Council
of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Northern Jurisdiction,
United States of America.
FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM

The forty-seventh problem of Euclid's first
book, which has been adopted as a symbol in the Master's Degree,
is thus enunciated: "In any right-angled triangle, the square
which is described upon the side subtending the right angle is
equal to the squares described upon the sides which contain the
right angle." Thus, in a triangle whose perpendicular is
three feet, the square of which is nine, and whose base is four
feet, the square of which is sixteen, the hypothenuse, or subtending
side, will be five feet, the square of which will be twenty-five,
which is the sum of nine and sixteen. This interesting problem,
on account of its great utility in making calculations and drawing
plans for buildings, is sometimes called the Carpenter's Theorem.

For the demonstration of this problem the
world is indebted to Pythagoras, who, it is said, was so elated
after making the discovery, that he made an offering of a hecatomb,
or a sacrifice of a hundred oxen, to the gods. The devotion to
learning which this religious act indicated in the mind of the
ancient philosopher has induced Freemasons to adopt the problem
as a memento, instructing them to be lovers of the arts and sciences.

The triangle, whose base is four parts,
whose perpendicular is three, and whose hypothenuse is five, and
which would exactly serve for a demonstration of this problem,
was, according to Plutarch, a symbol frequently employed by the
Egyptian priests, and hence it is called by M. Jomard, in his
Exposition du Systeme Métrique des Amperes Egyptians, Exposition
of the Ancient Egyptians System of Measurements, the Egyptian
triangle. It was, with the Egyptians, the symbol of universal
nature, the base representing Osiris, or the male principle; the
perpendicular, Isis, or the female principle; and the hypothenuse,
Horus, their son, or the produce of the two principles. They added
that three was the first perfect odd number, that four was the
square of two, the first even number, and that five was the result
of three and two. But the Egyptians made a still more important
use of this triangle. It was the standard of all their measures
of extent, and was applied by them to the building of the pyramids.
The researches of M. Jomard, on the Egyptian system of measures,
published in the magnificent work of the French savants on Egypt,
has placed us completely in possession of the uses made by the
Egyptians of this forty-seventh problem of Euclid, and of the
triangle which formed the diagram by which it was demonstrated.

If we inscribe within a circle a triangle,
whose perpendicular shall be 300 parts, whose base shall be 400
parts, and whose hypotenuse shall be 500 parts, which, of course,
bear the same proportion to each other as three, four, and five;
then if we let a perpendicular fall from the angle of the perpendicular
and base to the hypothenuse, and extend it through the hypothenuse
to the circumference of the circle, this chord or lane will be
equal to 480 parts, and the two segments of the hypothenuse, on
each side of it, will be found equal, respectively, to 180 and
320. From the point where this chord intersects the hypothenuse
let another lane fall perpendicularly to the shortest side of
the triangle, and this line will be equal to 144 parts, while
the shorter segment, formed by its junction with the perpendicular
side of the triangle, will be equal to 108 parts. Hence, we may
derive the following measures from the diagram: 500, 480, 400,
320, 180, 144, and 108, and all these without the slightest fraction.
Supposing, then, the 500 to be cubits, we have the measure of
the base of the great pyramid of Memphis. In the 400 cubits of
the base of the triangle we have the exact length of the Egyptian
stadium.

The 320 gives us the exact number of Egyptian
cubits contained in the Hebrew and Babylonian stadium. The stadium
of Ptolemy is represented by the 480 cubits, or length of the
line falling from the right angle to the circumference of the
circle, through the hypothenuse. The number 180, which expresses
the smaller segment of the hypothenuse being doubled, will give
360 cubits, which will be the stadium of Cleomedes. By doubling
the 144, the result will be 288 cubits, or the length of the stadium
of Archamedes; and by doubling the 108, we produce 216 cubits,
or the precise value of the lesser Egyptian stadium.

Thus we get all the length measures used
by the Egyptians; and since this triangle, whose sides are equal
to three, four, and five, was the very one that most naturally
would be used in demonstrating the forty-seventh problem of Euclid;
and since by these three sides the Egyptians symbolized Osiris,
Isis, and Horus, or the two producers and the product, the very
principle, expressed in symbolic language, which constitutes the
terms of the problem as enunciated by Pythagoras, that the sum
of the squares of the two sides will produce the square of the
third, we have no reason to doubt that the forty-seventh problem
was well known to the Egyptian Priests, and by them communicated
to Pythagoras.

Doctor Lardner, in his edition of Euclid,
says:

Whether we consider the forty-seventh proposition with reference
to the peculiar and beautiful relation established in it, or to
its innumerable uses in every department of mathematical science,
or to its fertility in the consequences derivable from it, it
must certainly be esteemed the most celebrated and important in
the whole of the elements, if not in the whole range, of mathematical
science. It is by the influence of this proposition, and that
which establishes the similitude of equiangular triangles, in
the sixth book, that geometry has been brought under the dominion
of algebra, and it is upon the same principles that the whole
science of trigonometry is founded. The thirty-second and forty-seventh
propositions are said to have been discovered by Pythagoras, and
extraordinary accounts are given of his exultation upon his first
perception of their truth. It is however, supposed by some that
Pythagoras acquired a knowledge of them in Egypt, and was the
first to make them known in Greece.

FORTY TWO

The number of judges required to sit by
the body of the Egyptian dead pending the examination and without
which the deceased had no portion in Amenti (see Truth).
FORTY TWO LETTERED NAME

See Twelve Lettered Name
FOUL

The ballot-box is said to he foul when,
in the ballot for the initiation or advancement of a candidate,
one or more black balls are found in it.
FOUNDATION-STONE

This term has been repeatedly used by Doctor
Oliver, and after him by some other writers, to designate the
chief stone or corner-stone of the Temple or any other building.
Thus, Oliver says, "the Masonic days proper for laying the
Foundation-stone of a Mason's Lodge are from the 15th of April
to the 15th of May"; evidently meaning the corner-stone.
The usage is an incorrect one. The foundation-stone, more properly
the stone of foundations, is very different from the corner-stone
(see Corner-stone).
FOUNDATION, STONE OF

See Stone of Foundation
FOUNTAIN

In some of the advanced Degrees a fountain
constitutes a part of the furniture of the initiation. In the
science of symbology, the fountain, as representing a stream of
continually flowing water, is a symbol of refreshment to the weary;
and so it might be applied in the Degrees in which it is found,
although there is no explicit interpretation of it in the Masonic
instructions, where it seems to have been introduced rather as
an exponent of the dampness and darkness of the place which was
a refuge for criminals and a spot fit for crime.

Brother Albert Pike refers to the fountain
as "tradition, a slender stream flowing from the Past into
the Present, which, even in the thickest darkness of barbarism,
keeps alive some memory of the Old Truth in the human heart."
But this beautiful idea is not found in the symbolism as interpreted
in the old ceremonies.
FOUR

Four is the tetrad or Quaternary of the
Pythagoreans! and it is a sacred number in the advanced Degrees.
The Pythagoreans called it a perfect number, and hence it has
been adopted as a sacred number in the Degree of Perfect Master.
In many nations of antiquity the name of God consists of four
letters, as the Adad, of the Syrians, the Amum of the Egyptians,
the efos of the Greeks, the Deus of the Romans, and pre-eminently
the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of the Jews. But in Symbolic
Freemasonry this number has no special significance.
FOUR OLD LODGES, ONE OF THE

Of the four old Lodges of London known to
have met in 1716 to discuss the formation of a Grand Lodge and
in 1717 met and elected a Grand Master, two are still active:
Lodge of Antiquity (see history of it by Rylands and Firebrace)
and the Lodge about which Rev. and Bro. Arnold Whitaker Oxford
wrote: No. 4: An Introduction to the History of the Royal Sommerset
House and Inverness Lodge (Bernard Quaritch; London; 1928). Other
old Lodges still at work were, as Old Dundee Lodge very probably
was, of Time Immemorial origin but did not participate (as far
as any records show) in the formation of the Grand Lodge. Those
which did participate must have agreed among themselves that each
Time Immemorial Lodge would ever remain independent in some very
real sense; Preston insisted upon this independence for Antiquity
when he led a secession of a majority of its members; Bro. Oxford
still insists upon it for No. 4. The fact, at least as it is generally
believed to have been the fact, that many more old Lodges were
at work in London and in England before 1717 than was once believed,
makes the place of Antiquity and No. 4 the more distinguished
among Lodges; they are the oldest existing Lodges of Speculative
Free masonry not only in England but in the whole world where
by "Speculative" is meant the Grand Lodge system.
FOUR CROWNED MARTYRS

The legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs should
be interesting to k Masonic scholars, because it is one of the
few instances, perhaps the only one, in which the church has been
willing to do honor to those old workers in stone, whose services
it readily secured in the Medieval ages, but with whom, as with
their successors the modern Freemasons, it has always appeared
to be in a greater or less degree of antagonism. Besides, these
humble but true-hearted confessors of the faith of Christianity
were adopted by the Stonemasons of Germany as the patron saints
of Operative Masonry, just as the two Saints John have been since
selected as the patrons of the Speculative branch of the Institution.

Dr. Christian Ehrmann, of Strasbourg who for thirty years had
devoted his attention to this and to kindred subjects of Masonic
archeology, has supplied us with the most interesting details
of the life and death of the Four Crowned Martyrs.

The Roman Church
has consecrated November 8 to the commemoration of these martyrs,
and yearly, on that day, offers up the prayer: "Grant, we
beseech thee, O Almighty God, that as we have been informed of
the constancy of the glorious martyrs in the profession of Thy
faith, so we may experience their kindness in recommending us
to Thy mercy-." The Roman Breviary of 1474 is more-explicit,
and mentions them particularly by name.

It is, therefore, somewhat
remarkable, that, although thus careful in their commemoration,
the Missals of the Roman Church give us no information of the
deeds of these holy men. It is only from the Breviaries that we
can learn anything of the act on which the commemoration in the
calendar was founded. Of these Breviaries, Ehrmann has given full
citations from two: the Breviary of Rome, published in 1474, and
the Breviary of Spire, published in 1478. These, with some few
extracts from other books on the subject, have been made accessible
to us by George Kloss, in his interesting work entitled, Freimaurerei
in ihrer wahren Bedeutung, or Freemasonry in its true significance.

The Breviarium Romanum is much more complete in its details than
the Breviarium Spirense; and yet the latter contains a fen incidents
that are not related in the former. Both agree in applying to
the Four Crowned Martyrs the title of quadratarii. Now quadratarius,
in the Latin of the lower age, signified a Stone-squarer or a
Mason. This will remind us of the passage in the Book of Rings,
thus translated in the authorized version: "And Solomon's
builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers.

" It is evident from the use of this word quadratarii in
the ecclesiastical legends as well as from the incidents of the
martyrdom itself, that the four martyrs were not simply sculptors,
but stone-cutters and builders of temples: in other words, Operative
Masons. Nor can we deny the probability of the supposition, that
they were members of one of those colleges of architects, which
afterward gave birth to the gilds of the Middle Ages, the corporations
of builders, and through these to the modern Lodges of Freemasons.
Supposing the legend to be true, or even admitting that it is
only symbolical, we must acknowledge that there has been good
reason why the Operative Masons should have selected these martyrs
as the patron saints of their profession.

Now let us apply ourselves
to the legend. Taking the Roman Breviary as the groundwork, and
only interpolating it at the proper points with the additional
incidents related in the Breviary of Spire, we have the following
result as the story of the Four Crowned Martyrs. In the last quarter
of the third century Diocletian was Emperor of the Roman Empire.
In his reign commenced that series of persecutions of the Christian
church, which threatened at one time to annihilate the new religion,
and gave to the period among Christian writers the name of the
Era of Martyrs. Thousands of Christians, who refused to violate
their consciences by sacrificing to the heathen gods, became the
victims of the bigotry and intolerance, the hatred and the cruelty,
of the Pagan priests and the Platonic philosophers; and the scourge,
the cross, or the watery grave daily testified to the constancy
and firmness of the disciples of the prophet of Nazareth. Diocletian
had gone to the Province of Pannonia, that he might by his own
presence superintend the bringing of metals and stones from the
neighboring mines of Noricum, wherewith to construct a temple
consecrated to the sun-god, Apollo. Among the six hundred and
twenty-two artisans whom he had collected together for this purpose
were fourby name Claudius, Castorius, Symphorianus, and
Nichostratus said to have been distinguished for their skill
as Stonemasons. They had abandoned the old heathen faith and were
in secret Christians, doing all their work as Masons in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Breviary of Spires relates here
an additional occurrence, which is not contained in the Breviary
of Rome, and which, as giving a miraculous aspect to the legend,
must have made it doubly acceptable to the pious Christians of
the fifteenth century, upon whose religious credulity one could
safely draw without danger of a protest.

It seems that, in company
with our four blessed martyrs, there worked one Simplicius, who
was also a mason, but a heathen. While he was employed in labor
near them he wondered to see how much they surpassed in skill
and cunning all the other artisans. They succeeded in all that
they attempted, while he was unfortunate, and always breaking
his working tools.

At last he approached Claudius, and said to
him: "Strengthen, I beseech thee, my tools, that they may
no longer break."

Claudius took them in his hands, and said:
"In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ be these tools henceforth
strong and faithful to their work."

From this time, Simplicius
did his work well, and succeeded in all that he attempted to do.
Amazed at the change, Simplicius was continually asking his fellow workmen
how it was that the tools had been so strengthened that now they
never broke. At length Claudius replied:

"
God, who is our
Creator, and the Lord of all things, has made His creatures strong."

Then Simplicius inquired Was not this done by the God Zeus?"

To this Claudius replied: "Repent, O my brother, of what
thou hast said. for thou hast blasphemed God, our Creator, whom
alone we worship, that which our own hands have made we do not
recognize as a God."

With these and such sentences they converted
Simplicius to the Christian faith, who, being baptized by Cyrillus,
bishop of Antioch, soon afterward suffered martyrdom for his refusal
to sacrifice to the Pagan gods.

One day Diocletian issued an order,
that out of a piece of marble should be constructed a noble statue
of Apollo sitting in his chariot. And now all the workmen and
the philosophers began to consult on the subject. and each one
had arrived at a different opinion. And when at length they had
found a huge block of stone, which had been brought from the Island
of Thasos, it proved that the marble was not fit for the statue
which Diocletian had commanded, and now began a great war of Lords
between the masters of the work and the philosophers. glut one
day the whole of the artisans, six hundred and twenty-two in number,
with five philosophers, came together, that they might examine
the defects and the veins of the stone, and there arose a still
more wonderful contest between the workmen and the philosophers.

Then began the philosophers to rail against Claudius, Symphorianus,
Nichostratus, and Simplicius, and said: " Why do ye not hearken
to the commands of our devout Emperor, Diocletian, and obey his
will?"

Claudius answered and said: " Because we cannot
offend our Creator and commit a sin, whereof we should be found
guilty in His sight "

Then said the philosophers: "
From this it appears that you are Christians."

Claudius replied:
"Truly we are Christians." Hereupon the philosophers
chose other masons, and caused them to make a statue of Esculapius
out of the stone which had been rejected, which, after thirty-one
days, they finished and presented to the philosophers, These then
informed the Emperor that the statue of Esculapius was finished,
when he ordered it to be brought before him for inspection. But
as soon as he saw it he was greatly astonished, and said:

'This
is a proof of the skill of these men, who receive my approval
as sculptors."

It is very apparent that this, like all other
legends of the church, is insufficient in its details, and that
it leaves many links in the chain of the narrative to be supplied
by the fancy or the judgment of the readers. It is equally evident
from what has already been said, in connection with what is subsequently
told, that the writer of the legend desired to make the impression
that it was through the influence of Claudius and the other Christian
Masons that the rest of the workmen were persuaded that the Thasian
stone w as defective and unfit for the use of a sculptor; that
this was done by them because they were unwilling to engage in
the construction of the statue of a Pagan god; that this was the
cause of the controversy between the workmen and the philosophers;
that the Latter denied the defectiveness of the stone; and, lastly,
that they sought to prove its fitness by causing other masons,
who were not Christians, to make out of it a statue of Esculapius.

These explanations are necessary to an understanding of the legend,
which proceeds as follows:

As soon as Diocletian had expressed
his admiration of the statue of Esculapius, the philosopher said:
" Most mighty Caesar, know that these men whom your majesty
has praised for their skill in Masonry, namely, Claudius, Symphorianus,
Nichostratus, and Castorius, are Christians, and by magic spells
or incantations make men obedient to their will." Then said
Diocletian: "If they have violated the lawns and if your
accusations he true, let them suffer the punishment of sacrilege."
But Diocletian, in consideration of their skill, sent for the
Tribune Lampadius, and said to him: " If they refuse to offer
sacrifice to the sun-god Apollo, then let them be scourged with
scorpions. But if they are willing to do so, then treat them with
kindness." For five days sat Lampadius in the same place,
before the temple of the sun-god, and called on them by the proclamation
of the herald, and showed them many dreadful things, and all sorts
of instruments for the punishment of martyrs, and then he said
to them: " Hearken to me and avoid the doom of martyrs, and
be obedient to the mighty prince, and offer a sacrifice to the
sun-god, for no longer can I speak to you in gentle words."
But Claudius replied for himself and for his companions with great
boldness: "This let the Emperor Diocletian know: that we
truly are Christians, and never can depart from the worship of
our God." Thereupon the Tribune Lampadius, becoming enraged.
caused them to be stripped and to be scourged with scorpions,
while a herald, by proclamation, announced that this was done
because they had disobeyed the commands of the emperor. In the
same hour Lampadius, being seized by an evil spirit, died on his
seat of judgment. As soon as the wife and the domestics of Lampadius
heard of his death, their ran with great outcries to the palace.
Diocletian, when he had learned what had happened, ordered four
leaden coffins to be made, and that Claudius and his three
companions being placed therein alivethey should be thrown
into the river Danube. This order Nicetius, the assistant of Lampadius,
caused to be obeyed, and thus the faithful masons suffered the
penalty and gained the crown of martyrdom.

There are some books
of legends which give the names of the Four Crowned Martyrs as
Severus, Severzanus, Carpophorus, and Vidorinus, and others again
which speak of five confessors who, a few years afterward, suffered
martyrdom for refusing to sacrifice to the Pagan gods, and whose
names being at the time unknown, Pope Melehiades caused them to
be distinguished in the church calendar as the Four Crowned Martyrs:
an error, says Jacob de Voragine, which, although subsequently
discovered, was never corrected. But the true legend of the Four
Crowned Martyrs is that which has been given above from the best
authority, the Roman Breviary of 1474. "

On the other side
of the Esquiline," says Mrs. Jameson in her Sacred and Legendary
Art (volume ii, page 0324), "and on the road leading from
the Coliseum to the Lateran, surmounting a heap of sand and ruins,
we come to the church of the 'Quattro Coronati,' the Four Crowned
Brothers. On this spot, some time in the fourth century, were
found the bodies of four men who had suffered decapitation, whose
names being then unknown, they were merely distinguished as Coronati,
crownedthat is, with the crown of martyrdom."

There
is great obscurity and confusion in the history of these men.
Their church, Mrs. Jameson goes on to say, is held in particular
respect by the builders and stone-cutters of Rome. She has found
allusion to these martyr masons not only in Roman art, but in
the old sculpture and stained glass of Germany. Their effigies
she tells us, are easily distinguished by the fact that they stand
in a row, bearing palms, with crowns upon their heads and various
Masonic implements at their feet such as the rule, the square,
the mallet, and the chisel. They suffered death on the 8th of
November, 987, and hence in the Roman Catholic Missal that day
is dedicated to their commemoration. From their profession as
Stonemasons and from the pious firmness with which they refused,
at the cost of their lives, to consecrate their skill in their
art to the construction of Pagan temples, they have been adopted
by the Stonemasons of Germany as the Patron Saints of Operative
Masonry. Thus the oldest Regulation of the Stonemasons of Strasbourg,
which has the date of the year 1459, commences with the following
invocation: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost, and of our gracious Mother Mary, and also of
her Blessed Servants, the Four Crowned Martyrs of everlasting
memory."

Such allusions are common in the German Masonic
documents of the Middle ages. It is true, however that the English
Freemasons ceased at a later period to refer in their Constitutions
to those martyrs, although they undoubtedly borrowed many of their
usage's from Germany. Yet the Regius Manuscript of the Constitutions
of Freemasonry, the oldest of the English records, which is supposed
to have been written about the year 1390, under the title of Ars
Quatuor Coronatorum gives a rather copious detail of the legend
(lines 497 to 534), which is here inserted with only those slight
alterations of its antiquated phraseology which are necessary
to render it intelligible to modern readers, although in doing
so the rhyme of the original is somewhat destroyed:

Pray we now to God Almighty
And to His Mother, Mary bright
That we may keep these articles here
And these points well altogether,
As did those holy martyrs four
That in this Craft were of great honor.
They were as good Mason as on earth shall go
Gravers and image makers they were also,
For they were workmen of the best,
The emperor had them in great liking
He willed of them an image to make,
That might be worshiped tor his sake;
Such idols he had in his day
To turn the people from Christ's law,
But they were steadfast in Christ's law
And to their Craft, without denial;
They loved well God and all his lore,
And were in his service evermore.
True men they were, in that day,
And lived well in God's law
They thought no idols for to make,
For no good that they might take;
To believe on that idol for their god
They would not do so, though he were mad,
For they would not forsake their true faith,
And believe on his false law.
The emperor caused to take them at once
And put them in a deep prison.
The sorer he punished then in that place,
The more joy was to them of Christ's grace.
Then when he saw no other one
To death he let them then go.
Who so will of their life more know,
By the book he may it show,
In the legends of the saints
The names of the four crowned ones.
Their feast will be without denial,
After All Hallows, the eighth day.

The
devotion of these saints, which led to the introduction of their
legend into an ancient Constitution of Freemasonry, shows how
much they were reverenced by the Craft. In fact, the Four Crowned
Martyrs were to the Stone-cutters of Germany and to the earlier
Operative Masons of England what Saint John the Baptist and Saint
John the Evangelist became to their successors, the Speculative
Freemasons of the eighteenth century. From them the famous literary
Lodgethe Quatuor Coronati, of London, Englandhas been
so named.
FOURFOLD CORD

In the instructions of the Past Master's
Degree in America we find the following expression: "A twofold
cord is strong, a threefold cord is stronger, but a fourfold cord
is not easily broken." The expression is taken from a Hebrew
proverb which is to be found in the Book of Ecclesiastes (iv,
12): "And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand
him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken." The form
of the Hebrew proverb was changed to suit the symbolism of the
Degree.
FOUR NEW YEARS

According to the Talmud there were four
New Years. The first of Nisan was the new year for kings and festivals;
the reign of a king was calculated from this date. The first of
Elul was a new year for the tithing of cattle. The first of Tishri
was a new year for civil years, for years of release, jubilees,
and planting. The first of Shebat was a new year for the tithing
of trees.
FOUR OLD LODGES

Of the four old Lodges which constituted
the Grand Lodge of England, on Saint John the Baptist's day, 1717,
the Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2, London, was the first. The Lodge
meets by "Time Immemorial Constitution," having no Warrant
and, until the "Union," was first on the roll; a decision,
however, by ballot lost it its numerical priority. As Lodges
were known by the house in which they met, Antiquity Lodge was
designated The West India and American. The Royal Somerset House
and Inverness, No. 4, London, is the junior of the four Lodges
which constituted the Grand Lodge. At that time it met at the
Rummer and Grapes Tavern, Westminster, and subsequently at the
Horn, which latter gave the Lodge a name for many years. This
Lodge now represents three united Lodges, the names of two of
which are to be found in its present designation. Of the four
original Lodges, two only have been on the roll from 1740 as of
"Time Immemorial Constitution." The original No. 2 ceased
working about 1736 and was erased in 1740, and No. 3 accepted
a "New Constitution," now No. 12, and is known as Fortitude
and Cumberland. The four original Lodges, after the issue of the
Regulations of 1723, simply enjoyed the advantage of being ahead
of all the Warrant Lodges, the privilege of assembling by "Time
Immemorial Constitution," and the honor of having established
the first Grand Lodge in the universe (see Freemasonry, Early
British).
FOURTEEN

It is only necessary to remind the well-informed
Freemason of the fourteen days of burial mentioned in the legend
of the Third Degree. Now, this period of fourteen was not in the
opinion of Masonic symbolists, an arbitrary selection, but was
intended to refer to or symbolize the fourteen days of lunary
darkness, or decreasing light, which intervene between the full
moon and its continued decrease until the end of the lunar month.
In the Egyptian mysteries, the body of Osiris is said to have
been cut into fourteen pieces by Typhon, and thrown into the Nile.
Plutarch, speaking of this in his treatise on Isis and Osiris,
thus explains the symbolism of the number fourteen, which comprises
the Masonic idea:

The body of Osiris was cut into fourteen pieces;
that is, into as many parts as there are days between the full
moon. The moon, at the end of fourteen days, enters Taurus, and
becomes united to the sun, from whom she collects fire upon her
disk during the fourteen days which follow. She is then found
every month in conjunction with him in the superior parts of the
signs. The equinoctial year finishes at the moment when the sun
and moon are found united with Orion, or the star of Orus a constellation
placed under Taurus, which unites itself to the Neomenia of spring.
The moon renews herself in Taurus. and a few days afterward is
seen, in the form of a crescent in the following sign. that is,
Gemini, the home of Mercury. Then Orion. united to the sun in
the attitude of a formidable warrior, precipitates Scorpio. His
rival, into the shades of night, for he sets every time Orion
appears above the horizon. The day becomes lengthened, and the
germs of evil are by degrees destroyed. It is thus that the poet
Nonnus pictures to us Typhon conquered at the end of winter, wizen
the sun arrives in Taurus, and when Orion mounts into the heavens
with him.

The first few lines of this article. Fourteen, prompted
a discussion in the Builder of November, 1927 (page 35 ), and
in the Sandusky Masonic Bulletin, December 1927 (page 149), relative
to fourteen or fifteen days of burial. The former quotes Prichard
of 1730 in favor of fifteen; that several Masonic Jurisdictions
in the United States prefer fifteen as the number; that Webb and
Cross so taught; that England has no definite period but mentions
a considerate time; that Doctor Mackey was probably right in assuming
an astronomical significancethe lunar period between the
full and the new moonbut the fifteenth day is nevertheless
the first day of the new moon. Doctor Merz in she Bulletin, however,
quotes Fellows in favor of fourteen days, mentions the Great Pyramid
and its latitude as providing that fourteen days before the Vernal
Equinox, the sun would cease to east a shadow at noon and would
not again cast it for fourteen days after the autumnal Equinox,
and that the significant conformity of the legends of Osiris and
of Hiram deserves favor. The Builder suggests further that altogether
too many alterations in the ritual have been made in the interests
of schemes of interpretation and of superficial consistency, that
the thing to do is to discover the oldest available wording and
then try to assign a meaning to it, the first duty being to preserve
the tradition, a conclusion in which Doctor Merz and the rest
of us will join cordially with Brother Meekren (see Fifteen).
FOREIGN LANGUAGE LODGES IN LAW

In Masonic principle and in the Landmarks
there is nothing to forbid a Lodge from working in any language
of its choice Lodges under England, Ireland, Scotland, and almost
every American Grand Lodge have done so; but there are circumstances,
as in time of war, when the question of the language used is raised
because it is the language of an enemy people and when it is thus
raised it may be carried to court because it may involve a Charter,
and a Charter involves property. The classical case in America
was that of Schiller Lodge, No. 66, of Newark, N. J. During World
War I the Grand Lodge of New Jersey ordered discontinuance of
German; Schiller Lodge conformed for a period, then in 1919 and
on its own authority, resumed the use of German, whereupon the
Grand Lodge revoked its Charter and took possession of its assets
valued at $8,000. The Lodge sued; the case was carried to the
New Jersey Court of Appeals and Errors, and the Grand Lodge was
there sustained. A number of fundamentals in both Masonic and
Civil law were recognized, or defined, or employed in the case,
among them being:

1. There was a provision in Sehiller's Charter
to permit its use of German. A Charter is an official recognition
of a Lodge's sovereignty, but that sovereignty is limited; a Grand
Lodge can for cause suspend or revoke a Charter; therefore no
Charter of itself stands in absolute perpetuity, nor is inalterable,
nor releases a Lodge from the superior authority of Grand Lodge.

2. When a Grand Lodge takes due and regular
action in governance of Lodges the mandate is one that every Lodge
is to obey. Schiller Lodge disobeyed, and for that reason its
Charter was revoked, and on that ground the Grand Lodge defended
itself in Court; the Lodge raised the general question of language,
prejudice, etc., but this was declared irrelevant by the Court.

3. Since the question of language is not
covered by any Landmark (except negatively) a Grand Lodge is free
to permit, to refuse, and to reverse itself at will if circumstances
ordain, or if circumstances change.

4. The Landmark of Peace and Harmony can
be invoked on the question of language. If a single Lodge holds
out against each and every sister Lodge it, not they, has destroyed
Peace and Harmony. The question of the language to be used in
Schiller Lodge was decided at the moment of Grand Lodge action;
it was not in the power of the Lodge to rescind an action by Grand
Lodge, as it itself knew; when therefore it became recalcitrant
it disturbed Peace and Harmony.

5. Peace and Harmony is maintained in Freemasonry
not by compromise, evasion, indifference, or appeasement but by
the even and uncompromising enforcement of the laws, regulations,
and rules; when a Grand Lodge revokes the Charter of a recalcitrant
Lodge it is not itself destroying Peace and Harmony but is acting
to preserve it.

6. In a dissenting opinion Justice F. Minturn
took the ground that Schiller's members were Germans, therefore
a minority, and he appealed to the right of minorities. The Court
held that its members were American citizens, not a minority,
and that there can be no "minorities" in Masonry.

7. The dissenting Justice also argued that
the property of Schiller belonged to its members; the Court ruled
that the members own and use it conditionally; and by the terms
on which a Lodge exists its property reverts to Grand Lodge if
its Charter is revoked.

8. Students of Masonic jurisprudence find
in the Schiller Lodge case a profoundly interesting set of subjects
and questions. The most interesting subject is the coincidence
at many points of Masonic law and civil law, and the fact that
any Masonic law or mill may be a law or a datum in a civil Court;
the most interesting question lies in the fact that in this as
in almost every other case both the Court and the attorneys were
troubled because the Craft has never adopted an official definition
of Freemasonry.
FORT, GEO. FRANKLIN

George Franklin Fort was born in Atlantic
County, New Jersey, in a Methodist parsonage, November 20, 1843.
When he was eight years of age his uncle, also named Geo. F. Fort,
was Governor of New Jersey (from 1851 to 1854); and John Franklin
Fort, of the same family, was Governor from 190S1911. Fort had
a range of learning such as no other American scholar then possessed.

There had been learned men before him in
America but they had been specialists; Kiropp Lake, Henry Charles
Lea, George Park Baker, Roseoe Pound and other scholars of the
same encyclopedic sweep came afterwards. His family reported that
he had seventeen languages in addition to his own; learned Europe
by traveling over it and by studying its history in the places
where the history had occurred; he attended Heidelberg University,
studied law, returned home and was admitted to the bar in 1866,
and began to practice.

But it was for history, archeology, and
antiquarianism, not law, that he had a passion, especially the
history of the Middle Ages, which at that time was not the well-explored
familiar period of history it is now. He wrote and published treatise
after treatise on Medieval subjects; this outpouring by one of
the most brilliant and learned men went unnoticed in America because
Americans knew almost nothing about the Middle Ages, and felt
no need to take an interest in them. The one exception to this
national apathy was the Masonic Fraternity, which had spent some
four or five centuries of its existence in Medieval times, and
in origin, form, and tradition was more Medieval than modern.
Had not publishers permitted Fort's books to go out of print he
would by this time be a name almost as well known as Mackey, and
far better known than Findel whom he surpassed at every point.

Fort was made a Mason in Camden Lodge, No.
15, Camden, New Jersey. Charles S. Peiree, the father of Pragmatism,
the philosophy which William James was to make the American philosophy,
lived only a short distance away; it would be interesting to know
if Peirce was a Mason, because he also was one of the band of
men of encyclopedic scholarship whom America has so wholly neglected.
In 1870 Fort demitted to help form a new Lodge, Trimble No. 117,
at Camden, and was Master the following year. Also he was member
of Cyrene Commandery, No. 7; Van Hook Council, No. 8; Excelsior
Consistory, Camden; Honorary Member of York No. 236, York, England,
and Representative of the United Grand Lodge of England near the
Grand Lodge of New Jersey. He published many Masonic treatises,
brochures, and books on Operative Architects, Builders Marks,
Etc.

But it was into his great Early History
and Antiquities of Freemasonry that he poured his knowledge of
the earlier periods of the Craft. As against Oliver, who had an
uncritical mind, and was a reader of books but not a trained scholar,
and who could not tell the difference between a fable and a fact,
and whose books preceded his, Fort insisted on exact learning
and upon not going farther than records and proofs and sound reasons
could carry him. As against Gould, Hughan, Lane, etc., who were
to follow him, he refused to cut the history of the Craft down
to written documents, and saw, as neither Gould nor Hughan ever
was able to see, that any history of Freemasonry must be a history
of the whole of it, including its philosophy, ritual, symbols,
along with Lodge records and Lodge officers; must take in Freemasonry
now as well as Freemasonry in the Eighteenth Century, must not
omit the two centuries of Freemasonry in America from the scope
of it, as Hughan did, and must not set the High Grades to one
side as if they had no place in Masonic history.

The only easily available source of information
about the biography of Fort is in two articles published in The
Builder: "George Franklin Fort, Masonic Historians by his
brother, John Henry Fort; June, 1918, page 171. "The Masonic
Writings of George Franklin Fort, " by Oliver Day Street,
author of symbolism of the Three Degrees; July, 1918; page 210.

The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry,
by Geo. F. Fort; Fortescue & Co.;
Philadelphia; 1878. This edition contains a weighty treatise by
J. F. Garrison on "A Contribution to the History of the Lost
Word."
FOWLE, HENRY

A native of Medford, Massachusetts. born
in September, 1766, went to Boston at fourteen N ears of age and
served an apprenticeship as a pump and block maker, which occupation
he followed in after life. Better educated than most mechanics
of his time, he had good knowledge of the French language and
spoke it with the same fluency as his mother tongue. He was initiated
into the Lodge of Saint Andrew, Boston, April 10, 1793; was first
Master of Mount Lebanon Lodge, Boston, the Charter for which Lodge
he had been active in securing, which office he held in 1801,
1802, 1803 and 1805, the Lodge having been granted its Charter
on June 8, 1801. In 1805, Brother Fowle resigned his membership
in the Mount Lebanon Lodge and returned to the Lodge of Saint
Andrew, where he served as Master from 1810 to 1817. He was elected
Junior Grand Deacon of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and served
in this capacity from December 27, 1802, to December 7, 1805,
then as Senior Grand Deacon until December 14, 1807. From 1807
until December 27, 1808, he was Junior Grand Warden and from that
time to December 28, 1809, he held the office of Senior Grand
Warden. December 17, 1810, to December '8, 1818, he was Grand
Marshal.

Brother Fowle united with Saint Andrew's Royal Arch Chapter
as a member on February 18, 1795, and was admitted an honorary
member on November 2, 1808. In October, 1797, he was elected Scribe
of the Chapter and held the office two years, and October of 1799
he was elected to the office of King, held this situation five
years, in 1804 becoming High Priest of the Chapter and remaining
in this position four years. He also headed the Chapter in 1813
and 1814. He was Deputy Grand High Priest of the Grand Royal Arch
Chapter of Massachusetts for ten years, and for several years
an officer of high rank in the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter
of the United States. Received Knight Templar Degree in Saint
Andrew's Chapter, January 28, 1795, and first Sovereign Master,
Boston Encampment, Red Cross Knights, 1802-24; Grand Generalissimo,
Grand Encampment of United States, 1816, Deputy Grand Master,
1819. See Bylaws of Saint Andrew's Royal Arch Chapter, Boston,
1866 (pages 106 and 107) where we are also told of Brother Fowle
that, "As he was perfect in the ritual of every grade of
the Order, he was considered high authority by his younger and
less informed Brethren" (see Memorial Volume, Knights Templar
Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Henry W. Rugg, pages 97-103).
During the many years of his activity he served almost constantly
on various Committees of the Grand Lodge and records show his
name on each and every Committee appointed which had anything
whatever to do with matters pertaining to regalia, and his correspondence
shows that he personally submitted designs to the Grand Lodge
for many of the official Jewels of Office. Right Worshipful Brother
Henry Fowle died in Boston, at the age of seventy-one, March 10,
1837.
FRANCE

The early history of Freemasonry in France
is, from the want of authentic documents, in a state of much uncertainty.
Kloss, in his Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Frankreich or History
of Freemasonry in France (volume i, page 14), says, in reference
to the introduction of Freemasonry into that kingdom, that the
earliest date of any certainty is 1725. Yet he copies the statement
of the Sceau Rompu, meaning the Broken Seal a work published in
1749 that the earliest recognized date of its introduction is
1718; and the Abbé Robin says that nothing of it is to
be found further back than 1720.

Brother Lalande, the great astronomer, was
the author of the article on Freemasonry in the Encyclopédie
Méthodique, and his account has been generally recognized
as authentic by succeeding writers. According to him, Lord Derwentwater,
the Chevalier Maskeleyne, a Mr. Heguetty, and some other Englishmen,
the names being corrupted, of course, according to French usage,
founded, in 1725, the first Lodge in Paris. It was held at the
house of an English confectioner named Hure, in the Rue de Boucheries.
In ten years the number of Lodges in Paris had increased to six,
and there were several also in the provincial towns.

As the first Paris Lodge had been opened
by Lord Derwentwater, he was regarded as the Grand Master of the
French Freemasons, without any formal recognition on the part
of the Brethren, at least until 1736, when the six Lodges of Paris
formally elected Lord Harnouester as Provincial Grand Master;
in 1738, he was succeeded by the Duke d' Antin; and on the death
of the Duke, in 1743, the Count de Clermont was elected to supply
his place. Brother R. F. Gould, in his Concise History of Freemasonry
(page 355), considers that the name Harnouester is probably a
corruption of Derwentwater.

Organized Freemasonry in France dates its
existence from this latter year. In 1735, the Lodges of Paris
had petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for the establishment
of a Provincial Grand Lodge, which, on political grounds, had
been refused. In 1743, however, it was granted, and the Provincial
Grand Lodge of France was constituted under the name of the Grande
Loge Anglaise de France. The Grand Master, the Count de Clermont,
was, however, an inefficient officer; anarchy and confusion once
more invaded the Fraternity; the authority of the Grand Lodge
was prostrated; and the establishment of Mother Lodges in the
provinces, with the original intention of superintending the proceedings
of the distant provincial Lodges, instead of restoring harmony,
as was vainly expected, widened still more the breach. For, assuming
the rank and exercising the functions of Grand Lodges, they ceased
all correspondence with the metropolitan Body, and became in fact
its rivals.

Under these circumstances, the Grand Lodge
declared itself independent of England in 1755, and assumed the
title of the Grande Loge de France. It recognized only the three
Degrees of Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, and was
composed of the Grand Officers to be elected out of the body of
the Fraternity, and of the Masters for life of the Parisian Lodges;
thus formally excluding the provincial Lodges from any participation
in the government of the Craft.

But the proceedings of this Body were not
less stormy than those of its predecessor. The Count de Clermont
appointed, in succession, two Deputies, both of whom had been
displeasing to the Fraternity. The last, Lacorne, was a man of
such low origin and rude manners, that the Grand Lodge refused
to meet him as their presiding officer. Irritated at this pointed
disrespect, he sought in the taverns of Paris those Masters who
had made a traffic of initiations, but who, heretofore, had submitted
to the control, and been checked by the authority of the Grand
Lodge. From among them he selected officers devoted to his service,
and undertook a complete reorganization of the Grand Lodge.
The retired members, however, protested against these illegal
proceedings; and in the subsequent year, the Grand Master consented
to revoke the authority he had bestowed upon Lacorne, and appointed
as his deputy, M. Chaillou de Jonville. The respectable members
now returned to their seats in the Grand Lodge; and in the triennial
election which took place in June, 1765, the officers who had
been elected during the Deputy Grand Mastership of Lacorne were
all removed. The displaced officers protested, and published a
defamatory memoir on the subject, and were in consequence expelled
from Freemasonry by the Grand Lodge. Ill feeling on both sides
was thus engendered, and carried to such a height, that, at one
of the communications of the Grand Lodge, the expelled Brethren,
attempting to force their way in, were resisted with violence.
The next day the lieutenant of police issued an edict, forbidding
the future meetings of the Grand Lodge. The expelled party, however,
still continued their meetings. The Count de Clermont died in
1771 and the excluded Brethren having invited the Duke of Chartres,
afterward Duke of Orleans, to the Grand Mastership, he accepted
the appointment. They now offered to unite with the Grand Lodge,
on condition that the latter would revoke the decree of expulsion.

The proposal was accepted, and the Grand
Lodge went once more into operation. Another union took place,
which has since considerably influenced the character of French
Freemasonry. During the troubles of the preceding years, Masonic
Bodies were instituted in various parts of the kingdom, which
professed to confer Degrees of a higher nature than those belonging
to Craft Freemasonry, and which have since been so commonly known
by the name of the High Degrees. These Chapters as summed a right
to organize and control Symbolic or Blue Lodges, and this assumption
has been a fertile source of controversy between them and the
Grand Lodge. By the latter Body they had never been recognized,
but the Lodges under their direction had often been declared irregular,
and their members expelled.

They now, however, demanded a recognition,
and proposed, if their request was complied with, to bestow the
government of the Hauts Grades, or High Degrees, upon the same
person who was at the head of the Grand Lodge. The compromise
was made, the recognition was decreed, and the Duke of Chartres
was elected Grand Master of all the Councils, Chapitels, and Scotch
Lodges of France.

But peace was not yet restored. The party
who had been expelled, moved by a spirit of revenge for the disgrace
formerly inflicted on them, succeeded in obtaining the appointment
of a committee which was empowered to prepare the new Constitution.
All the Lodges of Paris and the provinces were requested to appoint
Deputies, who were to form a Convention to take the new Constitution
into consideration. This Convention, or, as they called it, National
Assembly, met at Paris in December, 1771. The Duke of Luxembourg
presided, and on the twenty-fourth of that month the Ancient Grand
Lodge of France was declared extinct, and in its place another
substituted with the title of Grand Orient de France.

Notwithstanding the declaration of extinction
by the National Assembly, the Grand Lodge continued to meet and
to exercise its functions. Thus the Fraternity of France continued
to be harassed, by the bitter contentions of these rival Bodies,
until the commencement of the Revolution compelled both the Grand
Orient and the Grand Lodge to suspend their labors.
On the restoration of civil order, both Bodies resumed their operations,
but the Grand Lodge had been weakened by the death of many of
the perpetual Masters, who had originally been attached to it;
and a better spirit arising, the Grand Lodge was, by a solemn
and mutual declaration, united to the Grand Orient on the 28th
of June, 1799.

Dissension's, however, continued to arise
between the Grand Orient and the different Chapters of the high
Degrees. Several of those Bodies had at various periods given
in their adhesion to the Grand Orient, and again violated the
compact of peace. Finally, the Grand Orient, perceiving that the
pretensions of the Scottish Rite Freemasons would be a perpetual
source of disorder, decreed on the 16th of September, 1805, that
the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree should thenceforth
become an independent Body, with the power to confer Warrants
of Constitution for all the Degrees superior to the Eighteenth,
or Rose Croix; while the Chapters of that and the inferior Degrees
were placed under the exclusive control of the Grand Orient.

But the Concordat was not faithfully observed
by either party, and dissension's continued to exist with intermittent
and unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation, which was, however,
at last effected in some sort in 1841. The Masonic Obedience of
France was later on more amicably divided between the the Bodies,
and the Grand Orient and the Supreme Council exist as independent
powers in French Freemasonry. The constant tendency of the former
to interfere in the administration of other countries would furnish
an unpleasant history for the succeeding thirty years, at last
terminated by the general refusal of the Grand Lodges in the United
States, and some in Europe, to hold further Masonic communication
with it; a breach which every good Freemason must desire to see
eventually healed. One of the most extraordinary acts of the Grand
Orient of France has been the abolition in 1871 of the office
of Grand Master. the duties being performed by the President of
the Council of the Order.

Discussion and an attempted avoidance of
a threatening Masonic calamity by a large number of the Fraternity
of France did not avail to prevent the General Assembly of the
Grand Orient of France from completing its overthrow and that
of its subordinates by the almost unanimous adoption of the now
famous amendment of Article I of the Constitution of Freemasonry,
on September 14, 1877.

The following is the text of the amendment
and of the original second paragraph which was expunged:

Original paragraph: "Freemasonry has
for its principles the existence of God, the immortality of the
soul, and the solidarity of mankind."
Substituted amendment: "Whereas, Freemasonry
is not a religion, and has therefore no doctrine or dogma to alarm
in its Constitution, the Assembly adopting the Vaeu IX has decided
and decreed that the second paragraph of .Article I of the Constitution
shall be erased, and that for the words of the said article the
following shall be substituted:
Being an institution essentially philanthropic,
philosophy, and progressive, Freemasonry has for its object, search
after truth, study of universal morality, sciences and arts, and
the practice of benevolence. It has for its principles. absolute
liberty of conscience and human solidarity, it excludes no person
on account of his belief and its motto as Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity."

The adoption of the above was after a full and
deliberate consideration by its constituents, who for more than
a year were in the throes of deep deliberation and judgment.

The Grand Lodge of England appointed a Committee
to consider this action of the Grand Orient in thus expunging
the existence of T. G. A. O. T. U. from its tenets, and they reported
that such alteration is "opposed to the traditions, practice
and feelings of all true and genuine Masons from the earliest
to the present time"; and it was resolved that foreign brethren
could only be received as visitors if they had been initiated
in a Lodge professing belief in T. G. A. O. T. U., and would themselves
acknowledge such belief to be an essential landmark of the Order.
Similar action was taken by other Grand Lodges.

Since the above article was prepared by
Brother E. L. Hawkins, a third Grand Lodge came into being in
France. This is the Grande Loge Nationale indépendante
et Réguliere pour la France et les Colonies Françaises,
or the National Independent and Regular Grand Lodge for France
and the French Colonies as constituted and recognized by the Grand
Lodge of England. From the Manifesto issued to the Brethren on
December 27, 1913, at Paris by Grand Master E. de Ribancourt,
and from the Histoire de la Franc Maçonnene Française
by Albert Lantoine, 1925 (pages 410-5) we learn that a Lodge at
Paris, named the Centre des Amis, the Center of Friends, worked
the Degrees of the Rectified Scottish Rite, in French the Rite
Ecossais Rectify, from 1910 under the auspices of the Diretoire
Helvétique of Geneva, Switzerland, but joined the Grand
Orient of France in 1911 with the understanding that it could
continue to practices its old ritualistic customs. The Lodge was
accordingly constituted as a subordinate Lodge of the Grand Orient
on Stay 1 , 1911, by Gaston Bouley, President of the Council.
This Lodge in 1913 wished to establish a Chapter of Saint Andrew
which in operation we may say in passing is deemed by the Grand
Orient and similar Bodies to be equivalent, to use Brother Albert
Lantoine's expression in his History (page 411), to the Eighteenth
Degree, the completion of the series contemplated by the usual
ceremonies of the Rectified Scottish Rite that the Lodge practiced.
When the rituals were supplied through the Grand Orient they avers
discovered to omit mention of the Grand Architect of the Universe.
Against this omission the Lodge protested but in vain. Accordingly
the Lodge Centre des Amis of Paris with the Lodge Anglaise (meaning
English) of Bordeaux formed the new Grand Lodge as is said by
the Manifesto, "to safeguard the integrity of our Rectified
Rituals and preserve in France the true Masonry of Tradition.!'
Brother NV. J. Coombes. Commenting on the situation in a paper
read in 1927 before the literary Lodge, Saint Claudius, No. 21,
Paris, had this to say:

Our position (that of the National, Independent
and Regular Grand Lodge) is clear for the Grand Orient forbids
the use of the phrase concerning the (G. A. O. T. U. (Grand Architect
of the Universe) and Juvanon, in his Vers la Lumiére (meaning
in French, Towards the Light) puts the status of the Grand Lodge
of France quite clearly when he says (page 81) that the Grand
Lodge of France has in order to attract the sympathy of the Anglo-Saxons,
authorized its Lodges to use or to reject, as they please, the
formula of the Grand Architect of the Universe, and has even permitted
certain Lodges to place the V. S. L. (the Volume of the Sacred
Law, the Bible) on the pedestal of the Worshipful Master, and
on its Master Masons Diplomas puts A. L. G. D. G. A. D. L. U.
(the initials of the French words meaning To the Glory of the
Grand Architect of the Universe) leaving every member to interpret
the phrase as he pleases.

This Grand Lodge formed the Provincial Grand
Lodge of Neustrie with headquarter at Paris, and the Provincial
Grand Lodge of Aquitaine under Bordeaux, having several Lodges
at Paris, as well as at Boulogne, Havre, Dunkirk. Rouen, Bordeaux,
etc. (see Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge of France).

An essay read by Brother N. Choumitsky,
Saint Claudius Lodge, No. 21, Paris, 1927, deals with the matter
of mutual recognition and was based on some twenty documents in
the archives of the Grand Lodge of the Urkraine. From these we
find the Grand Lodge of France early in 1764 asked the Grand Lodge
at London to supply a list of the Lodges she had warranted. On
July 18, 1764, these details were sent showing that of 340 Lodges
only three were constituted in France by her: The Lodge, No. 49,
Paris, a la Ville de Tonnerre, July 3, 1732; Lodge, No. 60, Valenciennes,
in Hainault, 1733, and Lodge No. 73, Chateau d'Aubigny (in Artois
or Berry, probably the latter), October 12, 1735. These Lodges
were erased from the English list and the two Grand Lodges agreed
not to create Lodges on each other's territory. In 1765 the French
Grand Lodge sent a list of her Lodges to England, and a new list
early in 1767 with copy of rules and a form of Deputation. These
were welcomed and the reply to them promised various documents.
But operations in France were suspended by the authorities, February
21, 1767. The official relations of the two Grand Bodies ceased.
Freemasonry again showed signs of life in France in 1771 and in
1772 there was submitted to the Grand Lodge of England the subject
of a treaty drawn up by Lebady. Brother Choumitsky says the Grand
Lodge of England no longer wished to treat as between peers, but
attempted to enjoy certain prerogatives.

This did not meet with approval but efforts
toward establishing mutual relations continued and December 1,
1773, prompted by La Chaussee, Baron de Toussainet, Grand Secretary,
wrote to the Marquis de Vignoles, of the Grand Lodge of England,
but his letter remained unanswered. Again he wrote on December
17 to the Marquis as well as to Brother Charles Dillon, D.G.M.,
also to Lord Petre, Grand Master, and to the Grand Lodge of England
itself. To each one of them he sent a report of his Masonic organization.

A treaty was sent from France on June 13,
1776, and we may also note that on June 28, in the name of the
Grand Lodge of England, Brother Vignoles complained of the establishment
at Naples of a Lodge, Saint John of Secret and Perfect Friendship,
by the French authorities. On August 8, 1775, Vignoles wrote to
La Chaussee expressing a belief that the treaty would be acceptable.
Three items were announced on September 5, bar Brother Heseitine,
as being inadmissible because of the same objections as were made
to Lebady's project in 1772. The difficulty really arose by the
word equality.

Brother Heseltine, as reported by Vignoles,
was of the opinion that basis could not hold good since Germanic
Sweden, Holland, etc., recognized their Mother in the Grand Lodge
of London, and the latter had proofs of its pioneer Masonic labors
in France. Vignoles planned to meet this in a complimentary way
by suggesting that the reference to English authorities should
be to the Sublime Grand Lodge of the Noble and the Ancient Society
of Free and Accepted Masons, established at the East of London,
etc. However, Brother Guillotin, Orator of the Chamber of Provinces
and member of the Commission charged to examine this, offered
advice that the best course would be not to speak about equality
at all, taking care at the same time to insert nothing whatever
in the treaty which might confirm the idea of any claim for superiority.

Vignoles again wrote, June 4, 1776, announcing
that the Grand Lodge of England remained steadfast in her decision.
brother Choumitsky tells of the upheaval in their plans made by
the struggle for American Independence followed by the French
Revolution and the altars of the Empire. He quotes Rebold about
the later and undated sending of Brother Morand to London unsuccessfully
to negotiate an alliance with the Grand Lodge of England, and
that in 1851 Brother Razy also failed. He therefore makes the
claim that while French Freed masons were individually welcome,
the Grand Bodies in France were not recognized until the formation
of the relational and Independent Grand Lodge in October, 1913.
(if the Grande Loge Mixte in France, and the steps leading up
to this curious situation, the proposed initiation of women, see
Masonry.

The Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie
Française by Brother Albert Lantoine (pages 383-93) points
out that the Grand Orient of France in the General Assembly of
1920 recognized the Lodge Droit Humain (Human Right or Equity)
a leading Co-Masonic Lodge at Paris but that this recognition
was limited, Brothers but not Sisters might visit Grand Orient
Lodges. The Grand Lodge of France has since the Convention of
October 25, 1903, declared members of any Co-Masonic Bodies as
irregular and by a decision of the Federal Council of September
15, 1913, refused to make any distinction between the Bodies claiming
to be Co-Masonic.
FRANCIS I, EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA

Eldest son of the Duke of Lorraine, born
December 8, 1708, succeeding his father in 1729 Also Duke of Tuscann.
He married the famous Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, and in
1745 became Emperor of Germany. Initiated at The Hague, 1731,
and made a Master Mason at a Special Lodge held at Houghton Hall
that year while visiting England. During the reign of Maria Theresa
Freemasonry was tolerated in Vienna, due, no doubt, to the patronage
of the Emperor. His death occurred at Innsbruck, Austria, August
18, 1765, when he was Grand Master (see Dr. A. Mackey's History
of Freemasonry, 1921, pages 2236 and 2255).
FRANCIS II

This Emperor of Germany, was a bitter enemy
of Freemasonry. In 1789, he ordered all the Lodges in his dominions
to be closed, and directed all civil and military functionaries
to take an oath never to unite with any secret society, under
pain of exemplary punishment and destitution of office. In 1794,
he proposed to the Diet of Ratisbon the suppression of the Freemasons,
the Illuminati, and all other secret societies. Diet, by the way,
is frown the Latin dies, meaning a day, and formerly applied to
the period of a session or sitting of delis gates or other persons
of importance was given to the group of individuals and in Austria
and Germany particularly the name has been attached to assemblies
of parliament. The Diet, controlled by the influence of Prussia,
Brunswick, and Hanover, refused to accede to the proposition,
replying to the emperor that he might interdict the Lodges in
his own states, but that others claimed Germanic liberty. In 1801,
he renewed his opposition to secret societies, and especially
to the Masonic Lodges, and all civil, military, and ecclesiastical
functionaries were restrained from taking any part in them under
the penalty of forfeiting their offices.
FRANCKEN, HENRY A.

The first Deputy Inspector General appointed
by Stephen Morin, under his Commission from the Emperors of the
East and West. Francken received his Degrees and his appointment
at Kingston, Jamaica. The date is not known, but it must have
been between 1769 and 1767. Francken soon afterward repaired to
the United States, where he gave the appointment of a Deputy to
Moses M. Haves, at Boston, and organized a Council of Princes
of Jerusalem at Albany. He may be considered as the first propagator
of the advanced Degrees in the United States.
FRANC-MAÇON, FRANC- MAÇONNERIE

The French names of Freemason and of Freemasonry.
The construction of these words is not conformable to the genius
or the idiom of the French language, which would more properly
employ the terms Mason libre, and Maçonnerie libre; and
hence Laurens, in his Essais historiques et critiques sur la Franc-Maçonnerie,
meaning Essays, Historical and Critical, on Freemasonry, adduces
their incorporation into the language as an evidence that the
Institution in France was derived directly from England, the words
being a literal and unidiomatic translation of the English titles.
But he errs in supposing that Franc-mason and Franc- Masonry are
any part of the English language.
FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHATEAU, LE COMTE

In the memoirs of Dixmerie, the surname
is shortened to Chateau. Member of the famous Lodge of Nine Sisters
and a renowned man of letters in France, as well as an able statesman.
Born at Saffais, Lorraine, France, April 17, 1750; died at Paris,
January 10, 1828. His real name was Francois but he was authorized
by the Nancy Parliament in 1777 to take the name of Neufchateau.
He was twice Minister of the Interior, President of the Senate,
1804 and 1814, and in 1806, together with Comte Lacepede, he revived
the Lodge first founded in 1776. His name is on the Lodge lists
of members in 1783, 1784, and on both issued for 1806. In the
calendar of the Grand Orient for 1814, he figures as one of the
three Conservators of the Grand Chapter (see Une Loge Maçonnique,
Louis Amiable, 1897, page 304-7).
FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAIN

A Provincial Grand Lodge was established
in this city, in 1766, by the Grand Lodge of England. In the dissension's
which soon after prevailed among the Freemasons of Germany, the
Provincial Grand Lodge of Frankfort, not finding itself supported
by its mother Grand Lodge, declared itself independent in 1783.
Since 1823, it has worked under the title of the Grosse Mutterloge
des Eklektischen Freimaurerbundes zu Frankfort a. M.
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN

Greatest of American diplomats, hero of
the War of Independence, distinguished also as publisher and printer,
editor and author, a notable philosopher whose instructive wisdom
always charms and edifies, a scientist whose valuable discoveries
are even today highly esteemed fundamental additions to practical
knowledge he was a devoted Freemason occupying for many years
places of official prominence and serving his Brethren with conspicuous
Masonic zeal and aptitude.

Born at Boston, Massachusetts, he had only
two years of school and at the age of ten left to work for his
father in soap and candle making. At thirteen apprenticed to his
brother James, a printer and publisher who started in 1721 a newspaper,
the New England Courant, Franklin soon commenced to write both
verse and prose, the latter quaint and vigorous of timely argument
on public questions. Franklin went to New York and in 1723 to
Philadelphia, working as a printer. Encouraged to go into business
for himself, he left for England, December, 1724, but the promised
support failed and as a printer he was employed at London until
October, 1796, when he again reached Philadelphia to resume his
position there as a workman. In 1728 he formed a printing partnership.

Two years later he owned the business. From
1729-65 he published and edited the Pennsylvania Gazette. His
enterprising career was industrious and capable in the extreme,
a record not readily condensed in a brief article. He taught himself
the use of several languages, made his influence multiplied by
the printing press, his witty Almanacs brightly written for a
quarter of a century averaged a sale of 10,000 copies annually.
Postmaster in 1737, he also with twenty-three other citizens in
1749 founded an academy that became the University of Pennsylvania,
a promoter of the American Philosophical Society, the organizer
of the Junto a compact debating club somehow curiously resembling
in its practices the same exchange of thought characterizing many
past and present French Lodges to which Franklin may easily have
contributed some influence if only by example.

Active in forming the first police force
in the Colonies, starting the fire department, the militia, improving
street paving, bettering the street lighting, introducing hospital
service, and so forth, it has truly been said of him that he gave
in his day the impulse to nearly every project for the welfare
of his city. A member of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania,
for almost twenty years in joint charge of the mails in the Colonies,
delegated to the Albany Convention where he submitted a plan for
colonial union, he was later entrusted with the raising of troops
and the building of forts in the wilderness against the Indians.
Recalled from this western responsibility, he was sent eastward,
to England, as the agent of the protesting Colonies.

Honored by the freedom of the city of Edinburgh,
made a Doctor of Laws by the University of Saint Andrews, Doctor
of Civil Law by Oxford, he was already a Master of Arts at Harvard,
at Yale, and at the College of William and Mary. Returning to
handle successfully public service at home, he was once more employed
abroad to represent the Colonies at a Committee of the English
Parliament, and was back in Philadelphia in 1775.

A delegate to the Continental Congress,
Post-Master General, on the Commission to Canada, one of the five
to prepare the Declaration of Independence, President of the Constitutional
Convention of Pennsylvania, chosen by Congress one of three to
discuss terms of peace with Admiral Howe in 1776, Commissioner
to France where John Adams wrote of him "Franklin's reputation
was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick
or Voltaire; and his character more esteemed and beloved than
all of them." Of his shrewd forcefulness we may read the
dramatic estimate of Thackeray in the Virginians (chapter 9).

A member appointed in 1781 of the Commission
to make peace with England, he also made treaties with Sweden
and Prussia. Going home he at once was elected on the Municipal
Council of Philadelphia and its chairman, then President of the
Supreme Executive Council, and twice reelected Delegate to the
Convention of 1787 framing the Federal Constitution, President
of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery
signing a petition to Congress in 1790 and six weeks later
in his old spirited style he defended with wit and literary art
this plea. Last of his remarkable exploits for the public good
these efforts just preceded his serene death in his home at Philadelphia
on April 17, 1790.

Franklin's Masonic connections are discussed
in Beginnings of Freemasonry in America by Brother Melvin M. Johnson,
P. G. M.; Benjamin Franklin as a Freemason by Brother Julius F.
Sachse; Une Loge Maconnique d'Avant 1789, by Brother Louis Amiable,
the latter work being the history of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters,
or Muses, at Paris. Other sources of information are mentioned
in the text. A concise statement of Franklin's activities of leading
interest to Freemasons is as follows:

1705-6, January 6, Old Style, born at Boston,
Massachusetts (New Style, January 17, 1706).

1734, August, advertised his Mason Boolc, a reprint of Anderson's
Constitutions of the Free-Masons, the first Masonic book printed
in America (see Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 284, May 9 to May 16,
1734). 1734, November 28, wrote as Grand Master to Brother Henry
Price at Boston two fraternal letters, one officially regarding
Masonic affairs and the other less formal (see Price, Henry)

1734-5, the State House, Independence Hall, built during Franklin's
administration as Grand Masters According to the old Masonic and
family traditions the cornerstone was laid by him and the Brethren
of Saint John's Lodge (set Votes of the Assembly; Etting's History
of Independence Hall, also date on water spouts of the Hall) 1735-8,
served as Secretary of Saint John's Lodge (see Liber B. 1731-8).

1738, April 13, Franklin, in a letter to his mother wrote, "Freemasons
have no principles or practices that are inconsistent with religion
and good manners." (See original draft in Franklin's handwriting
in his Commonplace Book in Collection of Historical Society of
Pennsylvania )

1755, June 24 took a prominent part in the Grand Anniversary and
Dedication of the "Freemason's Lodge" in Philadelphia,
the first Masonic building in America (see Pennsylvania Gazette,
No. 1384. July 3,

1755; also A Sermon preached in Christ Church. Philadelphia 1755,
in Collection of Historical Society of Pennsylvania).

1778, affiliated with Loge des Neuf Soeurs at Paris Presumably
the example of Franklin was not without influence on the resolution
taken by the leader of philosophy to be accepted a Freemason;
and on the other hand if is certain that the initiation of Voltaire
determined the Illustrious American to become affiliated with
the Nine Sisters (Lodge)-" " The name of Franklin comes
a little after that of Voltaire on the printed list of 1779"(see
Une Loge Maçonnique d'Avant 1789, page 145).

1778,-November 28, officiated at the Lodge of Sorrou) or Maçonic
funeral services of Voltaire (see Manuseript in Collection of
American Philosolyhical Society also Medal struck in honor of
the occasion in Masonic Temple Library, Philadelphia. Brother
Hnwkins states that another specimen of this rare medal is in
the possession of the Grand Lodge of Mecklenburg. Germany).

1779, May 21, elected Worshipful Master of the Lodge of the Sine
Sisters and the committee in notifying him at Passy, near Paris,
spoke of the Important and many affairs in which he was engaged
and that note withstanding that responsibility he could find time
to "follow the sessions of the Freemasons as though a brother
of utmost leisure." Franklin was Worshipful Master for two
years his authority being renewed in 1780 (see Une Loge Maçonnique
d'Atant 1789, by Brother Louis Amiable 1897, pages 136, 145).

1782, July 7, member of the Respectable Lodge de Saint Jean de.Jerusalem
(see docurnents in Collection of American Philosophical Society).

1785, April 24, elected Venerable d'Honneur of Respectable Lodge
de Saint Jean de Jerusalem (see documents in Collection of American
Philosophical Society).

1785, elected honorary member of Loge des Ron Amis, Good Friends,
Rouen, France (see documents in Collection of University of Pennsylvania).

1786, December 27, in the dedication of a sermon delivered at
the request of the R. W. Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, by Reverend
Joseph Pilmore in Saint Paul's Church, Philadelphia, Franklin
is referred to as " an Illustrious Brother whose distinguished
merit among Masons entitled him to their highest veneration"
(copy of the book is on Collection of Historical Society of Pe

1790, April 17 Benjamin Franklin passed to the Grand Lodge above

1906, April 19, memorial services at his grave in Christ Church
yard, S- E corner Fifth and Arch Sts., Philadelphia, by the officers
of the R. NV. Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania "the occasion being
to observe the two hunderedth anniversary of the birth of Brother
Benjamin Franklin.

FRANKS, ORDER OF REGENERATED

A political brotherhood that was instituted in France in 1815,
flourished for a while, and imitated in its ceremonies the Masonic
Fraternity.
FRASER, GEORGE

On November 30, 1736, when William Saint
Clare of the Hereditary Grand Mastership of Scottish Freemasons
resigned, the resignation being signed on November 24, Brother
Fraser was present and his name was attached as a witness to the
document. He was Deputy-Auditor of the Excise and Worshipful Master,
Canongate Kilwinning Lodge (see History of Freemasonry and Grand
Lodge of Scotland, William A. Laurie, 1859, page 100).
FRATER

Latin, meaning Brother. An expression borrowed
from the monks by the Military Orders of the Middle Ages, and
applied by the members to each other. It is constantly employed
in England by the Masonic Knights Templar, and is beginning to
be adopted, although not as generally, in the United States. When
speaking of two or more, it is an error to call them Fraters,
The correct plural is Fratres.
FRATERNAL ARMY LODGE, NO. 4
On October 17, 1861, Grand Master Coolidge,
Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, chartered Fraternal Army Lodge,
No. 4. Worshipful Joseph B. Knox, Master of Morning Star Lodge
of Boston at the time, was named its Worshipful Master. It was
one of many military Lodges in both armies of the Civil War, including
local Lodges in the zone of conflict, which faithfully carried
into practice the claims of the Mystic Tie; as then, at New Bern,
N. C., No. 4 recovered the possessions of St. John's Lodge, No.
3, sent them back to Boston for safe-keeping, and returned them
after the war. Innumerable instances of a like kind, carried on
through fours years, completely proved the reality of the Masonic
spirit; hundreds of civil and military leaders (Wm. McKinley among
them) were drawn into the Craft because of it; and it led to such
an increase in Masonic growth and influence that the Civil War
Period was a turning-point in the history of American freemasonry.
Also it drove completely out of the nations memory the stupid
allegations made during the craze of Anti-Masonry from 1826 to
1850. (For a detailed history of No. 4 see A Centennial History
of Morning Star Lodge, No. 4, by Edward S. Nason; Worcester, Mass.;
1894.)
FRATERNALLY

Doctor Mackey records the vusual mode of
subscription to letters in his day written by one Freemason to
another as, "I remain, fraternally yours," custom and
preference that continues to be frequently adopted.
FRATERNITY

The word was originally used to designate
those associations formed in the Roman Catholic Church for the
pursuit of special religious and ecclesiastical purposes such
as the nursing of the sick, the support of the poor, the practise
of particular devotions, etc. They do not date earlier than the
thirteenth century. The name was subsequently applied to secular
associations, such as the Freemasons. The word is only a Latin
form of the Anglo-Saxon Brotherhood. In the earliest lectures
of the eighteenth century we find the word fraternity alluded
to in the following formula:

How many particular points pertain to a Freemason?
Three: Fraternity, Fidelity, and Taciturnity.
What do they represent?
Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth among
all Right Masons.
FRATERNITY, OPERATIVES

A. In the Middle Ages and until about 1500
the Operative Masons were not organized as Speculative Freemasons
are. The builders as a whole, including the numbers of special
types of them such as Freemasons, wallers, setters, tilers, quarrymen,
etc., were everywhere subject to the general laws of the gild
system. In some periods and in some places they had a local gild
of their own. If a cathedral (or abbey, or priory of large size)
was to be built they formed their organization on the spot; a
Master of Masons (called by different titles) would be secured
by the foundation or administration behind the building enterprise,
and he would sign an agreement; this done he would send out a
call for workmen, so many of one sort, so many of another; if
houses for them and their families were not available they would
build them; they would build a dodge room or building for their
own use, and also, in most instances, a second room or building
in which plans were drawn, models were made, etc.

The Freemasons among the total number of
workmen would have meetings in the Lodge room or building, when
the need for one arose, or possibly at fixed times, their officers
presiding. From then until the building was completed, in ten,
twenty-five, or even fifty years, the Freemasons thus had their
own local organization. There is no evidence of any national or
general organization with a single center, but there is evidence
in Masonic traditions and in the text of labor laws that a local
organization would send delegates to assemblies, which appear
to have been called only at need.

Yet there was such a thing as Masonry in
general. Apprentices received everywhere the same training, same
at least in general outline though it is known that in detail
it differed an experienced Craftsman could tell a workman's origin
by his use of a stone axe. The modes of recognition were such
that any regular Freemason could prove himself to be one not only
at any place in his own country but also in foreign countries.

If a workman came seeking work, a certain
form of ceremony was used to greet him, to examine him, and to
employ him; if no employment was to be had he was given hospitality
for a night and received advises as to where work could be found.
On the whole, and allowing for a certain flexibility in the word,
Operative Freemasonry was a fraternity without a single, over-all
organization and center. This held true even where local Freemasons
became units in a local City Company and where two or three other
trades or crafts might be in the same Company; for in such organizations
each member craft had its own customs, members, officers, meetings
inside the Company. In the period between the dissolution of the
gilds and the first Grand Lodge of Speculative Masons in 1717,
permanent Lodges became established, each one a center for Freemasons
who might work privately, not in organized groups, for shorter
or longer period, over a surrounding area. Apprenticeship, the
old rules and regulations and customs, modes of recognition, and
ceremonies were the same in these separate Lodges, though they
had no Grand Lodge. Operative Masons had in use a number of names
for themselves, and might call themselves a brotherhood, "the
lodge," a society, a company, an assembly, a fraternity,
a modality, a corps, etc.; any one of these terms might refer
to workmen of every type in architecture as a whole, or it might
refer to the Freemasons only.

See The Cathedral Builders in England, by
Edward S. Prior; Seeley and Co.; New York; 1905. This is one of
the few non-Masonic books in which a historian of Masonry attempts
to discover or to describe the general form of organization of
the Craftsmen. He accounts for the extraordinary unity of Freemasonry
in Britain and Europe together, by their training, modes of recognition,
traveling, and believes that much working for the Benedictine
Monastic Order also played a part. The unity of monasticism (he
could have included the Orders of the Temple and of Malta) may
have had a share, but it could not have been a large one because
the dissolution of the monastic orders did not affect the unity
of the Masonic fraternity.
FRATERNIZE

To recognize as a Brother; to associate
with Masonically.
FREDERICK, DUKE OF YORK

Born 1763, second son of George III; died
in 1827. Made a Freemason, November 21, 1787, at the Star and
Garter Tavern, London, England, at a Special Lodge held for that
purpose by the Duke of Gumberland, then Grand Master. The Prince
of Wales, afterwards George IV, acted as sponsor for his brother.
FREDERICK HENRY LOUIS

Prince of Prussia, was received into Freemasonry
at Berlin by Frederick the Great, his brother, in 1740.
FREDERICK OF NASSAU

Prince Frederick, son of the King of the
Netherlands, and for many years the Grand Master of the National
Grand Lodge of that kingdom. He was ambitious of becoming a Masonic
reformer, and in addition to his connection with the Charter of
Cologne, an account of which has been given under that head, he
attempted, in 1819, to introduce a new rite. He denounced the
advanced Degrees as being contrary to the true intent of Freemasonry,
and in a circular to all the Lodges under the obedience of the
National Grand Lodge, he proposed a new system, to consist of
five Degrees, namely, the three symbolic, and two more as complements
or illustrations of the third, which he called Elect Master and
Supreme Elect Master. Some few Lodges adopted this new system,
but most of them rejected it. The Grand Chapter, whose existence
it had attacked, denounced it. The Lodges practicing it in Belgium
there Solved in 1830, but a few of them probably remain in Holland.
The full rituals of the two supplementary Degrees are printed
in the second volume of Hermes, and an attentive perusal of them
does not give an exalted idea of the inventive genius or the Prince.
FREDERICK PRINCE OF WALES

Father of King George III. Made a Freemason
November 5, 1737, in a Special Lodge at Kew, Doctor Desaguliers
presiding. He died in 1751. Three of his sons became members of
the Craft, the Dukes of York and Gloucester initiated in 1766,
the Duke of Cumberland, 1767 (see Royal Freemasons, George W.
Speth, 1885).
FREDERICK THE GREAT

Frederick II, King of Prussia, surnamed
the Great, was born on January 14, 1712, and died on August 17,
1786, at the age of seventy-four years and a few months. He was
initiated as a Freemason, at Brunswick, on the night of August
14, 1738, not quite two years before he ascended the throne.

In English, we have two accounts of this
initiation, one by Campbell, in his work on Frederick the Great
and his Times, and the other by Carlyle in his History of Frederick
the Second. Both are substantially the same, because both are
merely translations of the original account given by Bielfeld
in his Freundschaftliche Briefe, or Familiar Letters. The Baron
von Bielfeld was, at the time, an intimate companion of the Prince,
and was present at the initiation.

Bielfeld tells us that in a conversation
which took place on August 6 at Loo though Carlyle corrects him
as to time and place, and says it probably occurred at Minden,
on July 17 the Institution of Freemasonry had been enthusiastically
lauded by the Count of Lippe Buckeburg. The Crown Prince soon
after privately expressed to the Count his wish to join the society.
Of course, this wish was to be gratified.

The necessary furniture and assistance for
conferring the Degrees were obtained from the Lodge at Hamburg.
Bielfeld gives an amusing account of the embarrassments which
were encountered in passing the chest containing the Masonic implements
through the Custom-House without detection. Campbell, quoting
from Bielfeld, says:

The whole of August 14 was spent in preparations
for the Lodge, and at twelve at night the Prince Royal arrived,
accompanied by Count Wartensleben, a captain in the king's regiment
at Potsdam. The Prince introduced him to us as a candidate whom
he very warmly recommended, and begged that he might be admitted
immediately after himself. At the same time, he desired that he
might be treated like any private individual, and that none of
the usual ceremonies might be altered on his account. Accordingly,
he was admitted in the customary form, and I could not sufficiently
admire his fearlessness, his composure, and his address. After
the double reception, a Lodge was held. All was over by four in
the morning, and the Prince returned to the dual palace apparently
as well pleased with us as we were charmed with him.

Of the truth of this account there never
has been any doubt. Frederick the Great was certainly a Freemason.
But Carlyle, in his usual sarcastic vein, adds:

The Crown Prince prosecuted his Masonry
at Reinsberg or elsewhere, occasionally, for a year or two, but
was never ardent in it, ant very soon after his accession left
off altogether.... A Royal Lodge was established at Berlin, of
which the new king consented to be patron; but he never once entered
the palace, and only his portrait, a welcomely good one still
to be found there, presided over the mysteries of that establishment.

Now how much of truth with the sarcasm,
and how much of sarcasm without the truth, there is in this remark
of Carlyle, is just what the Masonic world is bound to discover.
Until further light is thrown upon the subject by documentary
evidence from the Prussian Lodges, the question can not be definitely
answered. But what is the now known further Masonic history of
Frederick? Bielfeld tells us that the zeal of the Prince for the
Fraternity induced him to invite the Baron Von Oberg and himself
to Reinsberg, where, in 1739, they founded a Lodge, into which
Keyserling, Jordan, Moolendorf, Queis, and Fredersdorf, Frederick's
valet, were admitted.

Bielded is again our authority for stating
that on June 20, 1740, King Frederick for he had then ascended
the throneheld a Lodge at Charlottenburg, and, as Master
in the chair, initiated Prince William of Prussia, his brother,
the Margrave Charles of Brandenburg, and Frederick William, Duke
of Holstein. The Dulce of Holstein was seven years afterward elected
Adjutant Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes at
Berlin.

We hear no more of Frederick's Freemasonry
in the printed records until the 16th of July, 1774, when he granted
his protection to the National Grand Lodge of Germany, and officially
approved of the treaty with the Grand Lodge of England, by which
the National Grand Lodge was established. In the year 1777, the
Mother Lodge, Royal York of Friendship, at Berlin, celebrated,
by a festival, the king's birthday, on which occasion Frederick
wrote the following letter, which, as it is the only printed declaration
of his opinion of Freemasonry that is now extant, is well worth
copying:

I cannot but be sensible of the new homage
of the Lodge Royal York of Friendship on the occasion of the anniversary
of my birth bearing, as it does the evidence of its zeal and attachment
for my person. Its orator has well expressed the sentiments which
animate all its labors; and a society which employs itself only
in sowing the seed and bringing forth the fruit of every kind
of virtue in my dominions may always be assured of my protection.
It is the glorious task of every good sovereign and 1 will never
cease to fulfill it. And so I pray God to take you and your Lodge
under his holy and deserved protection. Potsdam, this 14th of
February, 1777. Frederick. Brother ad. E. Cauthorne submits here
that, Frederick did not ill his latter days take the active interest
in Freemasonry that had distinguished his early life before coming
to the throne. It cannot be established that he ever attended
a meeting after he became king, though manic such efforts have
been attempted. Some overzealous persons have claimed that he
established the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Thirty-third
Degree but the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes at Berlin as well
as many European historians, have often shown this a> have
been impossible.

But we must not forget that the adoption of the
Constitutions makes them legally binding upon the Freemasons who
subscribe to this document, no matter whether it was or was not
the creation of Frederick. Further, in reference to the above
comments by Brother Cauthorne, the subject of Frederick's Masonic
activity and the Constitutions has been given critical study by
Brothers General Albert Pike, Enoch T. Carson and Dr. Wilhelm
Begemann (see their various conclusions in Mackey's revised History
of Freemasonry, pages 1828-39).
FREDERICK WILLIAM III

King of Prussia, and, although not a Freemason,
a generous patron of the Order. On December 29, 1797, he wrote
to the Lodge Royal York of Friendship, at Berlin, these words:
"I have never been initiated, as every one knows, but I am
far from conceiving the slightest distrust of the intentions of
the members of the Lodge. I believe that its design is noble,
and founded on the cultivation of virtue; that its methods are
legitimate, and that every political tendency is banished from
its operations. Hence, I shall take pleasure in manifesting on
all occasions my good-will and my affection to the Lodge Royal
York of Friendship, as well as to every other Lodge in my dominions."
In a similar tone of kindness toward Freemasonry, he wrote three
months afterward to Fessler. And when he issued, October 20, 1798,
an Edict forbidding secret societies, he made a special exemption
in favor of the Masonic Lodges. To the time of his death, he was
always the avowed friend of the Order.
FREE

The word Free, in connection with Mason,
originally signified that the person so called was free, entrusted
with certain rights, of the Company or Gild of Incorporated Masons.
For those Operative Masons who were not thus made free of the
gild, were not permitted to work with those who were. A similar
regulation still exists in many parts of Europe, although it is
not known to the United States. The term appears to have been
first thus used in the tenth century, when the traveling Freemasons
we are told were incorporated by the Roman Pontiff (see Traveling
Freemasons).

In reference to the other sense of free
as meaning not bound, not in captivity, it is a rule of Freemasonry
that no one can be initiated who is at the time restrained of
his liberty. The Grand Lodge of England extends this doctrine,
that Freemasons should be free in all their thoughts and actions,
so far, that it will not permit the initiation of a candidate
who is only temporarily in a place of confinement. In the year
1783, the Master of the Royal Military Lodge at Woolwich, No.
371, being confined, most probably for debt, in the King's Bench
prison, at London, the Lodge, which was itinerant in its character
and allowed to move from place to place with its regiment, adjourned,
with its Warrant of Constitution, to the Master in prison, where
several Freemasons were made.

The Grand Lodge, being informed of the circumstances,
immediately summoned the Master and Wardens of the Lodge "to
answer for their conduct in making Masons in the King's Bench
prison," and, at the same time, adopted a resolution, affirming
that "it is inconsistent with the principles of Masonry for
any Freemasons' Lodge to be held, for the purposes of making,
passing or raising Masons, in any prison or place of confinement"
(see Constitutions, 1784, page 349).
FREE AND ACCEPTED

The title Free and Accepted first occurs
in the Roberts Print of 172 , which is headed The Old Constitutions
belonging to the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted
Masons, and was adopted by Doctor Anderson in the second edition
of the Book of Constitutions, published in 1738, the title of
which is The New Book of Constitutions of the Antient and Honorable
Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons. In the first edition of
1723 the title was, The Constitutions of the Freemasons. The newer
title continued to be used by the Grand Lodge of England, in which
it was followed by those of Scotland and Ireland; and a majority
of the Grand Lodges in the United States have adopted the same
style, and call themselves Grand Lodges of Free and accepted Masons
(see also Accepted). The old lectures formerly used in England
give the following account of the origin of the term:

The Masons who were selected to build the
Temple of Solomon mere declared Free and were exempted, together
with their descendants from imposts duties, and taxes. They had
also the privilege to bear arms. At the destruction of the Temple
by Nebuchadnezzar, the posterity of these Masons were carried
into captivity with the ancient Jews. But the good-will of Cyrus
gave them permission to erect a second Temple having set them
at liberty for that purpose. It is from this epoch that we bear
the name of Free and Accepted Masons.

FREE AND ACCEPTED AMERICANS

Formed about 1863 as a native American patriotic
secret society by William Patton, who became its first president,
the first meeting being held in a stable, the second in Convention
Hall, New York City.

By 1805 there were fifty-nine Temples of
the organization in New York City and Kings County. Later on the
society was absorbed by the Know-nothing Party which flourished
in the ten years preceding 1860, and did not survive that movement.
Its first name was the American Brethren, afterwards the Wide
Awakes, but most commonly the Templars Order of the American Star,
Free and Accepted Americans. While the style adopted for the name
might suggest that some of its founders were members of the Craft,
we have no definite information relative to that point (see John
Bach McMaster's History of the People of the United States from
the Revolution to the Civil War, and the Builder, volume vu, 1921,
page 303). The Know-nothing Party to which reference has been
made, has also been called the American Party.

The National Council, at a meeting in Philadelphia,
February 1, 1556, adopted a platform and a ritual. The latter
is claimed to be the one given in American Politics, published
in 1882 by Cooper and Fenton, Chicago. The purposes of the Party
are stated in the second Article of the Constitution as follows:

The object of this organization shall be
to protect every American citizen in the legal and proper exercise
of all his civil and religious rights and privileges; to resist
the insidious policy of the Church of Rome, and all foreign influence
against our republican institutions in all lawful ways, to place
in all offices of honor, trust or profit, in the gift of the people,
or by appointment, none but native-born Protestant citizens, and
to protect, preserve and uphold the Union of these States and
the Constitution of the same.

The name, Know-nothing, came from that or
an equivalent expression being used by the members in reply to
questions concerning the organization.
FREE AND ACCEPTED ARCHITECTS

See Bromwell, Henry P. H.
FREE-BORN

In all the old Constitutions, free birth
is required as a requisite to the reception of Apprentices. Thus
the Lansdowne Manuscript says, "That the prentice be able
of birth, that is, free born." So it is in the Edinburgh
Kilwinning, the York, the Antiquity, and in every other manuscript
that has been so far discovered. And hence, the modern Constitutions
framed in 1721 continue the regulation. After the abolition of
slavery in the West Indies by the British Parliament, the Grand
Lodge of England on September 1, 1847, changed the word free-born
into free man, but the ancient landmark never has been removed
in America.

The non-admission of a slave seems to have
been founded upon the best of reasons; because, as Freemasonry
involves a solemn contract, no one can legally bind himself to
its performance who is not a free agent and the master of his
own actions.

That the restriction is extended to those
who were originally in a servile condition, but who may have since
acquired their liberty, seems to depend on the principle that
birth in a servile condition is accompanied by a degradation of
mind and abasement of spirit which no subsequent disenthralment
can so completely efface as to render the party qualified to perform
his duties, as a Freemason, with that freedom, fervency, and zeal
which are said to have distinguished our ancient Brethren. "Children)"
says Brother George Oliver, "cannot inherit a free and noble
spirit except they be born of a free woman."

The same usage existed in the spurious Freemasonry
or the mysteries of the ancient world. There, no slave, or man
born in slavery, could be initiated; because the prerequisites
imperatively demanded that the candidate should not only be a
man of irreproachable manners, but also a free-born denizen of
the country in which the mysteries were celebrated.

Some Masonic writers have thought that in
this regulation, in relation to free birth, some allusion is intended,
both in the mysteries and in Freemasonry, to the relative conditions
and characters of Isaac and Ishmael. The formerthe accepted
one, to whom the promise was given was the son of a free woman,
and the latter, who was east forth to have his hand against every
man and every man's hand against him, was the child of a slave.

Wherefore, we read that Sarah demanded of
Abraham, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son
of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son." Doctor Oliver,
in speaking of the grand festival with which Abraham celebrated
the weaning of Isaac, says that he "had not paid the same
compliment at the weaning of Ishmael, because he was the son of
a bondwoman, and consequently could not be admitted to participate
in the Freemasonry of his father, which could only be conferred
on free men born of free women." The ancient Greeks were
of the same opinion; for they used the word oovXo7rpe7reLa, or
slave manners, to designate any great impropriety of behavior.
FREEDOM

This is defined to be a state of exemption
from the control or power of another. The doctrine that Freemasons
should enjoy unrestrained liberty, and be free in all their thoughts
and actions, is carried so far in Freemasonry, that the Grand
Lodge of England will not permit the initiation of a candidate
who is only temporarily deprived of his liberty, or even in a
place of confinement (see Free). It is evident that the word freedom
is used in Freemasonry in a symbolical or metaphysical sense differing
from its ordinary signification. While, in the application of
the words free-born and free man, we use them in their usual legal
acceptation, we combine freedom with fervency and zeal as embodying
a symbolic idea. Gadicke, under the word Freiheit, in his Freimaurer-Lexicon,
thus defines the word:

A word that is often heard among us, but
which is restricted to the same limitation as the freedom of social
life. We have in our assemblies no freedom to act each one as
he pleases. But we are, or should be, free from the dominion of
passion, pride, prejudice, and all the other follies of human
nature. We are free from the false delusion that we need not be
obedient to the laws.

Thus he makes it equivalent to integrity;
a sense that Brother Mackey believed it to bear in the following
article.

Fisk has some observations on the freeing
of slaves among the Romans that are of value here. The liberating
of slaves took place in several ways. The most usual mode seems
to have been by will, freedom by bequest, manumissio per testamentum,
on the death of the owner. There were two other modes; census,
the listing, and per vindictam, by the freedom of the rod; the
former was when the slave with the master's consent, was enrolled
in the taxation list as a freedman; the latter was a formal and
public enfranchisement before the praetor (a Roman magistrate).
In the last case, the master appeared with his slave, before the
tribunal, and commenced the ceremony by striking him with a rod,
vindicta; thus treating him as still his slave. Then a protector
or defender, assertor libertatis, steps forward and requests the
liberation of the slave, by saying hunc hominem liberum esse aio,
jure Quirtium; upon which the master, who has hitherto kept hold
of the slave, lets him go, e manu emil-'ebat, and gives up his
right over him, with the words hunc hominem liberum esse volo.
A declaration by the praetor, that the slave should be free, formed
the conclusion.

To confirm this manumission, the freed slave
sometimes went to Terracina and received in the Temple of Feronia
a cap or hat, pileus, as a badge of liberty.

The slave to be freed must not be under
twenty years of age, nor the person setting him free under thirty
(Classical Antiquities, N. W. Fisk, page 290).

Feronia was honored as the patroness of
enfranchised slaves who ordinarily received their liberty in her
Temple on Mount Soracte. Her name was derived by some from a town
near the Temple, others credit it to the idea of her bringing
relief, hero, to slaves, or to her productiveness of trees and
fruits (Fisk, page 120; see also his allusions to sacrifices,
page 237; jus Quiritium, page 286; and Raising, page 287).
FREEDOM, FERVENCY, AND ZEAL

The earliest lectures in the eighteenth
century designated freedom, fervency, and zeal as the qualities
which should distinguish the servitude of Apprentices, and the
same symbolism is found in the ritual of the present day. The
word freedom is not here to be taken in its modern sense of liberty,
but rather in its primitive Anglo-Saxon meaning of frankness,
generosity, a generous willingness to work or perform one's duty
(see Fervency and Zeal). so Chaucer uses it in the Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales (line 43):

A knight there was. and that a worthy man,
That fro the time that he first began
To riden out, he loved chivalric
Trouthe and Honor, Freedom and Courtesy.

FREE MAN

The Grand Lodge of England, on September 1, 1847, erased from
their list of the qualifications of candidates the word free-born,
and substituted for it free man. Their rule now reads, "every
candidate must be a free man." This has been generally considered
in other countries as the violation of a landmark.
FREEMASON

One who has been initiated into the mysteries
of the Fraternity of Freemasonry. Freemasons are so called to
distinguish them from the Operative or Stone-Masons, who constituted
an inferior class of workmen, and out of whom they sprang (see
Stonemasons and Traveling Freemasons). The meaning of the epithet
free, as applied to Mason, is given under the word Free. In the
old lectures of the eighteenth century a Freemason was described
as being "a freeman, born of a freewoman, brother to a king,
fellow to a prince, or companion to a beggar, if a Mason,"
and by this was meant to indicate the universality of the Brotherhood.

The word Freemason was until recently divided
into two words, sometimes with and sometimes without a hyphen;
and we find in all the old books and manuscripts Free Mason or
Free-Mason. But this usage has generally been abandoned by writers,
and Freemason is usually spelled as one word. The old Constitutions
constantly used the word Mason. E et the word was employed at
a very early period in the parish registers of England, and by
some writers. Thus, in the register of the parish of Astbury we
find these items:

But the most singular passage is one found
in Cawdray's Treasurie of Similies, published in 1609, and which
he copied from Bishop Coverdale's translation of Werdmuller's
A Spiritual and most Precious Perle, which was published in 1550.
It is as follows:

As the freemason heweth-the hard stones . . . even so God the
Heavenly Free-Mason buildeth a Christian church.

But, in fact, the word was used at a much
earlier period, and occurs, Steinbrenner says in his Origin and
Early History of Masonry (page 110), for the first time in a statute
passed in 1350, in the twenty-fifth year of Edward I, where the
wages of a Master Freemason are fixed at 4 pence, and of other
Masons at 3 pence. The original French text of the statute is
"Mestre de franche-peer." "Here," says Steinbrenner,
"the word Freemason evidently signifies a free-stone masonone
who works in free-stone, the French franche-peer, meaning franche-pierre,
as distinguished from the rough masons who merely built walls
of rough, unhewn stone." This latter sort of workmen was
that class called by the Scotch Masons cowans whom the Freemasons
were forbidden to work with, whence we get the modern use of that
word.

Ten years after, in 1360, we have a statute
of Edward III, in which it is ordained that "every Mason
shall finish his work, be it of free-stone or of rough-stone,"
where the French text of the statute is file franche-pere ou de
grosse-pere." Thus it seems evident that the word free-mason
was originally used in contradistinction to rough-mason. The
old Constitutions sometimes call these latter masons rough layers.

Doctor Murray's New English Dictionary has
the following information under Freemason: The precise import
with which the adjective was originally used in this designation
has been much disputed Three views have been propounded.

1. The suggestion that free mason stands
for free stone mason would appear unworthy of attention, but for
the curious fact that the earliest known instances of any similar
appellation are mestre mason de France peer, master mason of free
stone. Act 25, Edward III, st. II, e. 3, A.D. 1350, and sculptores
lapidum liberorum "carvers of free stones," alleged
to occur in a document of 1217, Finders History of freemasonry
(51), citing Wyatt Papworth; the coincidence, however, seems to
be merely accidental.

2. The view most generally held is that
free masons were those who were free of the masons' gild. Against
this explanation many forcible objections have been brought by
Mr. G. W. Speth, who suggests:

3. That the itinerant masons were called
free because they claimed exemption from the control of the local
gilds of the towns in which they temporarily settled.

4. Perhaps the best hypothesis is that the
term refers to the mediaeval practice of emancipating skilled
artisans, in order that they might be able to travel and render
their services wherever any great building was in process of construction.

And then the following meanings are given:

1. A member of a certain class of skilled
workers in stone, in the fourteenth and following centuries often
mentioned in contradistinction to rough masons, ligiers, etc.
They traveled from place to place, finding employment wherever
important buildings were being erected, and had a system of secret
signs and passwords by which a craftsman who had been admitted
on giving evidence of competent skill could be recognized. In
later use, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the term seems often
to be used merely as a more complimentary synonym of mason, implying
that the workman so designated belonged to a superior grade.

The earliest instance quoted of the word
in this sense is in a list of the London City Companies of 1376.

2. A member of the Fraternity, called more
fully Free and Accepted Masons. Early in the seventeenth century,
the Societies of Freemasons, in sense 1, began to admit honorary
members, not connected with the building trades, but supposed
to be eminent for architectural w or antiquarian learning. These
were caned Accepted Masons, though the term Free Masons was often
loosely applied to them; and they were admitted to a knowledge
of the secret signs, and instructed in the legendary history of
the Craft, which had already begun to be developed. The distinction
of being an Accepted Mason became a fashionable object of ambition,
and before the end of the seventeenth century, the object of the
Societies of Freemasons seems to have been chiefly social and
convivial. In 1717, under the guidance of the physicist J. T.
Desaguliers, four of these Societies or Lodges in London united
to form a Grand Lodge, with a new constitution and ritual, and
a system of secret signs, the object of the Society as reconstituted
being mutual help and the promotion of brotherly feeling among
its members.

Brother E. L. Hawkins observes that the
earliest instance quoted of the word in this sense is in Ashmole's
Diary under date of 1646 (see Ashmole).

Gould in his Concise History has this to
say upon the subject:

Two curious coincidences have been connected
with the above year, 1375.

The first, that the earliest copy of the
manuscript constitutions, Remus Manuscript, refers to the customs
of that period;
the second, that the formation of of a wonderful
society, occasioned by a combination of masons undertaking not
to work without an advance of wages, when summoned from several
counties by writs of Edward III, to rebuild and enlarge Windsor
Castle, under the direction of William of Wykeham, has been plated
at the same date. It is said also that these masons agreed on
certain signs and tokens by which they might know one another,
and render mutual assistance against impressment- and further
agreed not to work unless free and on their own terms. Hence they
called themselves Free-Masons.

A child's book, Dives Pragmaticus, printed
in the year 1563, and reproduced in 1910 by the owner, the John
Rylands Library at Manchester, England, contains a list of occupations
and line 97 is Al Free masons, Brike layers and dawbers of walled.
FREE MASON EXAMIN'D

A curious and rare pamphlet first published in 1754 and purporting to give details of Lodge ceremonies. Author's name is given as Alexander Slade, a Past Master, but no such person has been identified at the place designated and the belief is that the identity was purposely disguised (see Slade, Alexander).

FREEMASONRY, EARLY BRITISH

Brother Robert Freke Gould, in his History of Freemasonry (volume i, page 381), says:

The Minutes of Scottish Lodges from the sixteenth century, and evidences of British Masonic life dating further back by some two hundred years than the second decade of the eighteenth century, were actually left unheeded by our premier historiographer, although many of such authentic and invaluable documents lay ready to ~and, only awaiting examination, amongst the munimets in the old Lodge chests. . . . By the collection and comparatively recent publication of many of the interesting records above alluded to, so much evidence has been accumulated respecting the early history, progress, and character of the craft as to be almost embarrassing, and the proposition may be safely advanced, that the Grand Lodger, of Great Britain are the direct descendants, by continuity and absorption, of the ancient Freemasonry which immediately preceded their institution, which will be demonstrated without requiring the exercise of either dogmatism or credulity. The oldest Lodges in Scotland possess registers of members and meetings, as well as particulars of their laws and customs, ranging backward nearly three hundred years. These will form an important link in the chain which connects what is popularly known as the Lodges of Modern Freemasonry, with their operative and speculative ancestors.

Early Freemasonry and the customs of the Craft in that country are discussed at length in Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry (pages 663-99).

There are no Lodge records in England of the seventeenth century, and records of only one between 1700 and 1717.

The original Saint Clair Charters now in the custody of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, dated, respectively, 1601, 1602, and 1628, axe referred to by Gould. Then are considered the Schaw Statutes, No. 1, Of 1598 A.D. (see Schaw Manuscript), the Schaw Statutes, No. 2, of 1599 A.D. and their relevancy to Mother Kilwinning Lodge, Ayrshire, No. 0, with an important certificate from William Schaw, which proves that the document of 1599 was intended exclusively for the Freemasons under the Jurisdiction of the Kilwinning Lodge. The subject of the Lodge of Edinburgh, No. 1, and its career from its earliest records, dating' back to 1599, down to the year 1736, when the Grand Lodge of Scotland was inaugurated, as most fully described in Lyon's history of this ancient Lodge, passes under review; then appears, as Brother Gould Bays, one of the adornments of that history in the facsimile of the record of that Lodge, showing that the earliest Minute of the presence of a speculative freeman Mason in a Lodge, and taking part in its deliberations, is dated June 8, 1600 (see his History of Freemasonry i, 406). It is to be noted that "the admission of General Alexander Hamilton, on May 20, 1640, and of the Right Honorable Sir Patrick Hume, Baronet, on December 27, 1667, are specially recorded as constituting these intrants 'Pelow and Mr off the forsed craft,' and 'Fellow of craft (and Master) of this lodg,' respectively" (Gould's History of Freemasonry i, page 408). It is assumed that Master simply meant a compliment; certainly, there was nothing now known to us as corresponding with the ceremony of a Master Mason's Degree at that time. But the allusion starts some speculation. Many of the operatives did not view the introduction of the speculative element with favor, and at one time they were arrayed in hostile camps; but eventually those who supported the Gentlemen or Geomatic Masons won the day, the Domatics having to succumb. In the Lodge of Aberdeen, the majority in 1670 A.D. were actually nonoperative or speculative members.

On March 2, 1653, appears the important fact of the election of a joining member. Again, Lyon declares that the reference to frie mesones, in the Minute of December 27, 1636, is the earliest instance yet discovered of Free-Mason being applied to designate members of the Mason craft, and considers that it is used as an abbreviation of the term Freenten Masons. But while concurring therein, as did Brother Hughan, Gould thinks the word freemason may be traced back to 1581, when the Melrose version of the Old Charges was originally written.

Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2, was Commissioned or Warranted by the Lodge of Kilwinning, No. 0, granting powers to several of their own members resident in the Canongate, Edinburgh, and dated December 20, 1677. This, Brother Gould says (page 410) was a direct invasion of Jurisdiction, for it was not simply a Charter to enable their members to meet as Freemasons in Edinburgh, but also to act as independently as "Mother Kilwinning" herself, with a separate existence, which was the actual result that ensued.

Scoon and Perth Lodge, No. 3, is much older than No. 2, although fourth on the roll, though the authorities state that it existed before 1658, and the Grand Lodge acknowledges this date at the present time, placing Nos. 0 and 1, however, as before.1598, and No. 57, Haddington, at 1599, there being also many bearing seventeenth century designations.

The Lodge of Glasgow Saint John, No. 3, bis, is the one next mentioned as "an old Lodge, undoubtedly, though its documents do not date back as far as some of its admirers have declared." The Rev. A T Grand is quoted as saying that every line is inconsistent with the charter phraseology of the period to which it has been assigned. But W. P. Buchan states
the first notice in the Minutes of the Glasgow Incorporation of Masons bears date September 22, 1620, namely, "Entry of Apprentices to the Lodge of Glasgow, the last day of Dec., 1613 compeared John Stewart, &etc." It was placed on
Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1850 as No 3, bis; it was exclusively operative.
Glasgow Kilwinning Lodge, No. 4, dates from 1735.

Canongate and Leith, Leith and Canongate Lodge No. 5, is authoritatively acknowledged as dating from 1688.

Lodge of Old Kilwinning Saint John, at Inverness, No. 6, was granted a Charter of Confirmation November 30, 1737, its existence being admitted from the year 1678, but a cloud rests upon the record.

Hamilton Kilwinning Lodge, No. 7, is considered to date from the year 1695.

Brother Gould, in his examination of Br, Lyons and other authorities, relating to the above records, thus dissents largely from the conclusions of Brother George F. Fort in his Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, as from the Antiquities, Freemasonry, by Brother J. G. Findel (see also Four Old Lodges in this Encyclopedia). The organization the Grand Lodge of Scotland is discussed in in Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry 1152-78).
FREEMASONRY, HISTORY

History of Freemasonry, by Dr. Albert Gallatin Mackey, thoroughly revised by a number of competent Brethren, Brother Robert I. Clegg as Editor in Chief, and published in seven volumes by the Maniew, History Company, Chicago. The History of
Freemasonry, by Robert Freke Gould, published in eight volumes, Edinburgh. Leipzig, second edition, London, 1869. There are several smaller works (see also: The Antiquity of Freemasonry; Origin of Freemasonry; Operative Freemasonry and Speculative Freemasonry).
FREEMASONRY, PROGRESSIVE

See Progressive Freemasonry.
FREEMASONS AUTHORIZED BY POPE

There is a curious reference in the History of Wiltshire, by John Aubrey. This book of 1691 ' contains the statement by Aubrey, "Sir William Dugdale told many years since that about Henry III's time Pope gave a Bull to . . . Freemasons to traveil and down all Europe to build Churches. From those are derived the Fraternity of Adopted Msons. Such a Bull from the Pope is still undiscovered. Aubrey refers to a period long prior to his own time, namely the reign of Henry III stretching through the years 1216-72 A.D. Sir William Dugdale (1605-85 A.D.) was the Garter King-at-Arms from 1677, an officer of the Order of the Garter or Order of Saint George, a Knightly organization founded in England about 1344 A.D., and still ranking first
among such institutions in Europe. Sir William Dugdale was an antiquarian of note whose painstaking zeal would have added much to the worth of Aubrey's assertion had it been recorded by him with further particulars of the Bull in question. Of Aubrey (1626-97 A.D.) there is every evidence of industry in the collection of his materials but his readiness to freely accept and confidently believe the gossip of his day earned for his comments a verdict of unreliability. As the matter stands, his allusion has aroused speculation but gained no further proof than what is here recorded.
FREEMASONS, CLASSIFICATION OF

See Classification of Freemasons.
FREE MASON'S HEALTH

See Enter'd Apprentice'S song and Birkhead, Matthew.
FREEMASONS MEDAL AND HALL

Silver medal suspended from the arms of the Master's square. On one side a winged figure, Fame, writes on a column In Honour of the Subscri, and has a trumpet and design of a temple in her left hand. In the background a building under erection bears the date MDCCLXXX. The other side has the subscription acknowledgment with subscriber's name surrounded by the phrase Grand Lodge of Freemasons in England. This method was decided upon in 1779 to pay off the balance due on grounds and buildings. Subscribers were given this medal and one went to every subscribing Lodge to be worn by the Master. Every subscribing Lodge in 1783 was allowed to send an extra representative to the Grand Lodge besides the Master and Wardens until the money should be repaid, and each subscriber was also made a member of the Grand Lodge. There existed a Freemasons Coffee Tavern in Wild Court, before the Grand Lodge in 1774 acquired property in Great Queen Street, London, England, on which to erect a Freemasons Hall. Lord Petre as Grand Master laid the foundation stone on May 1, 1775, and in 1777 the building was dedicated. On April 27, 1864, the day of Grand Festival, the Earl of Zetland, Grand Master for a quarter of a century, laid the foundation stone of the new Hall, but owing to many difficulties, financial and structural, it was not for five years that the work was completed. In 1919 the Duke of Connaught, as Grand Master, in a message to the Especial Grand Lodge held at the Royal Albert Hall on June 27, for the celebration of Peace, expressed an earnest hope that the Craft, "as a fitting sequel to the proceedings, would determine to create a perpetual Memorial of its gratitude to Almighty God, for the special blessings He has been pleased to confer upon us, both as Englishmen and as Masons, whereby we can render fitting honour to the many Brethren who fell during the War. The great and continued growth of Freemasonry amongst us demands a central Home." He suggested that the most fitting Masonic Peace Memorial would be "the erection of that Home in the metropolis of the Empire dedicated to the Most High, and worthy of the traditions of the United Grand Lodge of England." The largest gathering of its kind ever held in the City of London met on August 8, 1925, in joint celebration of the anniversary of the twenty-fifth year as Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Duke of Connaught, and the culmination of six years labor on the part of the Fraternity in raising the $5,000,000 required for building the Masonic Peace Memorial in London. The twenty-fifth year as Grand Master also meant his fiftieth year as a Freemason, and the seventy-fifth year of his age, all falling on the same day.
FREEMASONS OF THE CHURCH

An architectural college was organized in London, in the year 1842, under the name of Freemasons of the Church for the Recovery, Maintenance, and Furtherance of the True Principles and practice of Architecture. The founders of the association announced their objects to be "the rediscovery of the ancient principles of architecture; the sanction of good principles of building, and the condemnation of bad ones; the exercise of scientific and experienced judgment in the choice and of of the proper materials; the infusion, maintenance, and advancement of science throughout architecture; and eventually, by developing the powers of the college upon a just and beneficial footing, to reform the whole practise of architecture, to raise it from its present vituperated condition, and to bring around it the same unquestioned honor which is at present enjoyed by almost every other profession." One of their members has said that the title assumed was not intended to express any conformity with the general Body of Freemasons, but rather as indicative of the profound views of the college, namely, the recovery, maintenance, and furtherance of the free principles and practise of architecture; and that, in addition, they made it an object of their exertions to preserve or effect the restoration of architectural remains of antiquity, threatened unnecessarily with demolition or endangered by decay. But it is evident, from the close connection of modern Freemasonry with the building gilds of the Middle Ages, that any investigation into the condition of medieval architecture must throw light on Masonic history.
FREE-WILL AND ACCORD

There is one peculiar feature in the Masonic Institution that must commend it to the respect of every generous mind. In other associations it is considered meritorious in a member to exert his influence in obtaining applications for admission; but it is wholly uncongenial with the spirit of our Order to persuade anyone to become a Freemason. Whosoever seeks a knowledge of our mystic rites, must first be prepared for the ordeal in his heart; he must not only be endowed with the necessary moral qualifications which would fit him for admission by friends and unbiased by unworthy motives. This is a settled landmark of the Order; and, therefore, nothing can be more painful to a true Freemason than to see this landmark violated by young and heedless Brethren.

For it cannot be denied that it is sometimes violated. This habit of violation is one of those unhappy influences sometimes almost insensibly exerted upon Freemasonry by the existence of the many secret societies to which the present age has given birth, and which resemble Freemasonry in nothing except in having some sort of a secret ceremony of initiation. These societies are introducing into some parts of America such phraseology as a card for a dimit, or worthy for worshipful, or brothers for brethren. And there are some men who, coming among us imbued with the principles and accustomed to the usages of these modern societies, in which the persevering solicitation of candidates is considered as a legitimate, and even laudable practise, bring with them these preconceived notions, and consider it their duty to exert all their influence in persuading their friends to become members of the Craft. Men who thus misunderstand the true policy of our Institution should be instructed by their older and more experienced Brethren that it is wholly in opposition to all our laws and principles to ask any man to become a Freemason, or to exercise any kind of influence upon the minds of others, except that of a truly Masonic life and a practical exemplification of its tenets, by which they may be induced to ask admission into our Lodges. We must not seek - we are to be sought.

And if this were not an ancient law, embedded in the very cement that upholds our system, policy alone would dictate an adherence to the voluntary usage. We need not now fear that our Institution will suffer from a deficiency of members. Our greater dread should be that, in its rapid extension less care may be given to the selection of candidates than the interests and welfare of the Order demand. There can, therefore, be no excuse for the practise of persuading candidates, and every hope of safety in avoiding such a practise. It should always be borne in mind that the candidate who comes to us not of his own free will and accord, but induced by the persuasions of his friends - no matter how worthy he otherwise may be - violates, by so coming, the requirements of our Institution on the - very threshold of its temple, and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, fails to become imbued with that zealous attachment to the Order which is absolutely essential to the formation of a true Masonic character.
FREE ASSOCIATION

For certain necessary and inescapable purposes
men now and then, and of their own free will, form themselves
into associations (fraternities, clubs, sodalities, societies),
designed for a stated purpose, self-governed, and excluding control
by persons not in its membership. Men cannot work, or have culture
or civilization, or protect themselves as a people, or wage war
when war becomes a duty, or have schools, or sciences, or arts,
or any freedom of thought or speech or publication, or any means
of information, if they cannot form free associations; to do 60
belongs so essentially to the nature of man and to the world that
even such terms as rights and privileges are not sufficiently
strong to describe the sheer, absolute need for free associations;
which are to be classed with food, clothing, shelter in the order
of needs. To strike at free associations is to strike at man himself;
to make them impossible is to make it impossible for him to live.

When tyrannies or despotisms arise, when
some man or group or class, sets out to subjugate men, to render
them impotent, to turn them into helots, serfs, or slaves, it
is against the right of free association that they invariably
aim their first blow, and it matters not whether the tyranny be
in politics, work, war, religion, or society. The struggle of
the rank and file of ordinary men to resist, to overthrow those
groups or classes or churches or other organizations which have
countless times attempted to subjugate them is one of the two
or three keys to world history; the many struggles taken together,
and considered as one, is what Heinie meant by "the warfare
for humanity." World War I, waged against the ruling class
in Germany which was out "to conquer and rule" other
peoples, and World War II against an international group which
called itself variously Fascists, Nazis, Falangists, etc., who
undertook to divide the whole of Europe between a small "master
class" and populations of slaves, were only the two most
recent of the battles in that warfare. It was profoundly significant
that when the Vichy government ordered free associations destroyed
and appealed to organized workmen of each and every type to join
a "totalitarian" government, the French Underground
issued in May, 1941, a manifesto in which it declared that no
body of citizens would co-operate with the regime until it acknowledged
the principle "of freedom of association."

In the famous chapters on the Roman Collegia
in his History of Freemasonry (Vol. II) Bro. Albert G. Mackey
properly describes the collegia as genuine forms of free association,
but when he comes to the suspension or repression of them by the
late emperors was too willing to take the emperors' word for it
that a number of the collegia were illicita, or unlawful. Much
has been learned by archeologists since l)r. Mackey wrote those
pages, enough to make it clear that the collegia illicita were
not (except for a few) engaged in conspiracies, etc., but only
fought for enough wages to live on, and for their rights before
the law, etc. The Imperial gangsters at Rome gave the emperors'
crown to a succession of cut-throats of the same type, Mussolini
and Hitler who made use of the collegia (associations of workmen)
as a means of robbing workmen of almost everything they earned.

After Charlemagne in 800 set up the new
and continental, so-called Holy Roman Empire it took up where
the old Empire had left off; as soon as Charlemagne himself died
his successors began the old war against free associations; and
scholae, covines, sodalities, assemblies, etc., were forbidden.
(The Mason gilds escaped the worst restrictions because of the
nature of their work, especially the Freemasons who worked in
Gothic, because they either had to have a large measure of liberty
or they could neither move about when needed nor practice their
art. They may not have called themselves Free Masons for that
reason, but they were always conscious of being freer than other
Craftsmen and made much of the fact. Their use or not of the name
is not important.)

The Roman Catholic Church issued its first Bull of Excommunication
against Freemasonry in 1738, in an absurdly worded and ambiguous
document signed by Clement XII, then in his dotage. But the Vatican
had always been opposed to the Fraternity, and had been so because
it was a free association, a society the priests could not control;
it was then, as now, opposed to free association on principle.

This opposition was announced in no uncertain
terms as early as 1326 when the Council of Avignon issued a statute
of excommunication "Concerning the Societies, Unions and
Confederacies called Confraternities, which are to be utterly
extirpated or wiped out." The Freemasons were included under
this ban, and the same ban was readapted and reinforced in the
1860's, and again by the Arch Anti-Mason, Pope Leo XIII, in the
1880's. According to the Council of Avignon nobody was to meet
"under the name of a fraternity," nor wear "a similar
dress with certain curious signs or marks," etc.

England in that same period was in reality
a trifle more free than France, a little more humane, but was
not so in theory. In 1305 Henry IV forbade workmen if to hold
combinations (assemblies, general organizations) outside gild
limits; Masons living in the same town could meet, but they could
not meet with Masons from other towns. In 1361 Edward III declared
"null and void all alliances and covines of Masons and carpenters."
In 1425 Henry VI forbade Masons to hold any longer "yearly
congregations and confederacies made in their general chapiters
(sic) assembled."

In his History Gould argues against the
supposition that Masons ever held assemblies, but it may be supposed
that Henry VI, living at the time, must have been better informed.
In 1467 the Crown issued an edict that the tilers (a branch of
men in the building trade; roofers) of Worcester were to "sett
no parliament among them."

AUTHOR'S NOTE- As early as 1917 the writer
took the world that Freemasonry belongs under that general head
of social organization which for some 1200 years has been called
"free associations" and he has ever since held that
this fact is the corner-stone of Masonic sociology, and that it
is the starting-point for any history of the Fraternity. In Freemasonry
and Roman Catholicism, written in 1943 and published in 1944,
intended to be a fair, non-controversial essay on a difficult
theme, he took the same ground, and stated that because the Roman
papal system has always been a totalitarian dictatorship it would
be compelled by the logic of its own organization to seek to destroy
free associations, and that this would have to include Freemasonry.

Between those two dates he had opportunity
to study Professor Gierke's work on Medieval law along with Professor
Maitland's notes and commentaries on it, and in addition a number
of other works in the same field of Medieval law and custom which
belong to the Gierke constellation including one history of Medieval
agricultural law. Professor Gierke had no thesis to prove, nor
was he a crusader for any cause, his sole purpose was to bring
under review the forms of Medieval Law in one century and country
after another. He found that Medieval law was essentially corporative
law, and that where modern law is aimed at the individual man
Medieval law was aimed at an incorporated body of men hence the
importance of charters, warrants, articles of incorporation in
the Medieval period. Among the species of corporative bodies were
the free associations.

Since writing the brief article to which
this note is a pendant, the writer has belatedly secured once
again after having been without it for years a copy of the 1908
edition of The Gilds and Companies of London, by George Unwin;
Methuen & Co.; London. It is apropos in the present connection
because on page 11 Mr. Unwin unequivocally states that in free
associations is the principle of progress which most distinguishes
western civilization and under the head of free associations he
brings the craft and trade gilds, including the gilds, fraternities
and societies of Masons. "The greatest body of essential
truth yet attained in this field is to be found in the great work
of Professor Gierke, of Berlin, on the development of free association,
with the ideas of which Professor Maitland has done so much to
make us familiar . . . free fellowship has been the most vitally
essential element in social and political progress since the fall
of the Roman Empire."

This fact explains many things: it explains
why the Roman Church has since 1738 conducted an active crusade,
at an expense of millions of dollars and the work of thousands
of its employees and partisans, to destroy Freemasonry; why Mussolini
and Hitler both sought to destroy Freemasonry and for the same
reason as the Popes namely, that it is the witness to, and bearer
of the principle of free association; nearer home, it explains
why our own Masonic historians, such of them as have failed w
to begin with the fact that Freemasonry is in essence a free association,
have been led off into so many bogs or morasses of confusion;
and why the earliest Lodges set so much store on their first charters
or warrants. H.L.H.
FREEMASON, THE WORD

The word "free mason" first came
into use in the Fourteenth Century; from then until the Eighteenth
Century it appears in many forms, and oftentimes as a synonym
for other names and in more than one form: mason, builder, architect,
free mason, freemason, free stone mason, etc. In the first period
of Masonic scholarship it was assumed that Operative Masons had
used the word in one form, with one meaning; many investigators
at tempted to discover that original meaning. It was also assumed
that the origin of the word would throw light on the origin of
the Fraternity. At the present time scholars have abandoned the
first assumption, and they rely very little on the origin of the
word to explain the origin of Freemasonry. The data collected
from many periods and places indicate that the word must have
had a number of origins, and that a Crafts man who might be called
a Freemason in one place would not be called one in another. The
following are only a partial list of the origins, or possible
origins, of the word:

1. A worker in free-stone. Much quarry stone
used in walls, foundations, and single buildings was unequal in
hardness, coarse grained, and had either a crooked grain or a
grain which ran one way, like the grain in a pine board. The stone
used for carving had no grain, or a very fine grain, and could
be cut in any direction without splitting or chipping, and would
take a flat surface and a polish. It was called free-stone.

2. Local masons were by gild custom and
civil law confined to their own parishesat least, under
usual and normal circumstances. The cathedral and church building
Masons were not thus restricted, but were free to move about.
(An ordinary workman coming into a parish from outside, even from
the next parish, was a "foreigner" and in the towns
more than one street riot broke out over these outsiders.)

3. An apprentice was bonded to his master
for a period of years. This was called his indenture, at the end
of hie term he was examined, and then set free. Any master Mason
was in this sense a free Mason.

4. Once a town received a Charter of its
own it virtually became an independent government; and in the
course of time each resident of such a town became a citizen Outside
the walls was serfdom, inside was freedom from serfdom. This freedom
belonged to the "liberties" of the town. The member
of a Mason Company in such a town would be a citizen and therefore
free, whereas a mason outside the walls would not be free. (In
many cities strangers coming in to reside in a town might receive
this freedom at the end of one year and a day.)

5. It was once supposed that the Popes had
granted the Mason Fraternity a charter to travel about at will
unrestricted by local parish rules. Since no record of any such
charter has ever been found the theory is abandoned yet from the
Fabric Rolls (or day-by-day book-keeping records) of a number
of cathedrals and abbeys it is evident that the Freemasons working
on the building kept themselves separate from the local workmen
who worked with them, and did so under an ecclesiastical authority
of some sort.

6. There is no proof for the existence of
a separate fraternity of traveling, or (in one sense of the word)
journeymen Masons (unless the Compagnonage was one) but it is
certain that Masons, singly or in groups, often went about from
one country to another. They were free to travel in search of
work.

7. Civil and ecclesiastical authorities
both, and for centuries, used the method of impressment ("the
press gang") not only to recruit sailors and soldiers but
also to recruit workmen. There are a few instances of the impressment
of Masons, but not many; the over-all impression of the data is
that the Freemasons were considered a special class of craftsmen,
and free from many of the restrictions and indignities which often
drove other working men to desperation and revolt.

8. There is a psychological and ethical
(or the two combined) type of free manone who is free from
ignorance, free from superstition, free from servility, and therefore
a free man, meeting others as equals, even when belonging technically
to one of the so-called lower orders It is likely that it was
this freedom which the Freemasons felt and prized more deeply
than any other.

It may be that it was some one of these
meanings of the word "Freemason" which found its way
into those Old Constitutions, called the Old Charges, which possessed
warranting authority for the Lodges which set up the present Fraternity
of Speculative Freemasonry; it may be that a confluence of a number
of different meanings found their way into usage; in any event
the word had then, as it continues to have, a multiordinal, or
many-sided, meaning.

It is possible that future research will
be able to define the original meaning of "Freemason"
with rigorous correctness; if it does, Masons can then know who
were Freemasons among Medieval builders and who were not. But
even if that discovery were made, it would not solve the problem
of the origin of Speculative Freemasonry. The Speculative Fraternity
did not grow up everywhere as an inevitable outcome of the "evolution"
of Medieval architecture; had that been true there would have
come into existence a general Speculative Fraternity in Britain
and in every European country as well, whereas it is of record
that the Speculative Fraternity came into existence in England
only, and very probably in one place, and very likely in the Fourteenth
Century; not from Freemasons at large, but from one group of Freemasons
in particular. The founders of the Fraternity were Freemasons;
but not all Freemasons were founders of the Fraternity. (See page
378.)
FREEMASONRY, DEFINITION OF

A Masonic Lodge represents a body of workmen
in which each member has a station or place corresponding to his
task or function. Its chief officer is a Master Workman charged
with responsibility to see that the members work peaceably and
harmoniously as a unit at the task for which he lays the design
upon his Tracing Board; his principal assisting officer is responsible
for seeing that each man begins and ends on time and is at work
in the place where he belongs.

The body of potential workmen from whom new members may be drawn
is called the quarries; a man who comes from them is called a
Petitioner, and he must be qualified to take his place among the
body of workmen or he is not admitted. Immediately he is accepted
he becomes an Apprentice, which means he is to be trained, is
to become a learner of a craft, or form of work; and he is said
to be seeking light, which means intelligence and knowledge for
the work he is to do.

At the beginning he is given a learner's
tools; later he will receive tools for more advanced skill; and
at the end will receive the use of all of them; they are working
tools. He is clothed in a workman's apron; it is his livery, or
badge, and he is warned against ever feeling shame while wearing
it. These craftsmen are to act as one man, as men do when working
together in the same place. They have traditions which concern
men who worked on buildings, represented by a Temple, and of a
Master of Workmen, who superintended the building of that Temple;
but it is made clear that the work of builders is only a specimen
of each and every form of workit is symbolic. Their rules
and regulations concern their hours, wages, their duty to their
officers or overseers, and their discipline.

The Freemasons of the Middle Ages who formed
the first of these Lodges lived in a society in which not only
institutions and rulers but the great majority of men and women
were opposed to the teachings of Masonic Lodges, and were ready
to destroy them by force and violence. The fundamental doctrine
of the Church was that work as a curse which had been pronounced
on Adam's descendants as a supernatural and never-ceasing penalty
for his disobedience. The great reward of a good life was to be
released by death from toil, and entrance into "an everlasting
rest"where men have ceased from their labors and go about
in a never-ending worklessness. The two Patron Saints of a man
in work are his wife and family, but the head of the Church had
no wife, children or home.

The only truly holy man was a celibate priest
who did no work, or monks and nuns who kept long vigils of idleness,
or friars who went about the roads begging for food and lodging.
The King and his nobles and the aristocracy by which they were
surrounded looked down upon work as something beneath them; and
next below them came the rich merchants. From that level downward
men and women belonged to the lower classes because they were
working men and women in a descending series, skilled workmen,
mechanics laborers, peasants, villains, serfs, cotters, slaves.
These men and women of the lower classes were paid a few cents
per day; had no voice or vote in Church or State; could hold no
high office in army or government received no education could
not even read and write, could not marry above their class; could
own almost no property; were compelled by law to dress according
to their station; could be impressed with force by the sheriffs
to labor on public works or to fight in the army or navy. When
the new colonies were opened up they were herded into small ships
like cattle and sent without tools, implements, weapons, doctors,
or teachers to live in the wilderness among savages.

To prevent their rebellion some 200 small
felonies were made punishable by deathone man was hanged,
burned, and quartered because he had dared to translate the Bible
into the language used by the common people These disgraces, indignities,
injustices, and atrocities were heaped upon them with a terrible
inhumanity s century after century not because they were criminals,
traitors, or recusants but because they were neither lords nor
landlords but were working men. There were better times and worse;
there were occasions when a man was honored for work that he had
done; once in a thousand times a man might marry above or below
his class; but these were nothing but sporadic exceptions, and
did not avail to overthrow the barbaric feudalism, the cardinal
principle of which was that a lord on and not only the land but
the men who worked on it, and since he owned the men he owned
the products of their work. The Medieval Freemasons found out
the truth about work; they found it out for themselves, and from
the work they themselves were doing, which was unlike the work
being done by any other craftsmen. They did not write that truth
down in books or cast it in the form of a creed, and Masons have
never done so since, nevertheless it is possible to set it down
in a series of statements in the language of today:

1. To work is to produce, grow, or make
something without which men and women cannot continue to live;
to have such things a man must make use of himself as the means
to produce them. Since this is true he is neither an animal nor
a machine; to take away from him by force. fraud or chicane, directly
or indirectly, the products of his work, is to do violence not
to things but to the man himself, and hence is absolute injustice.

2. The need men and women have for countless
products, services, and commodities is not a temporary one, nor
is it accidental, but continues to be true for ever. For this
reason work is neither a curse nor an inconveniences but is a
fact about the nature of man and the world, and is so eternally.

3. Since this is true, work is one of the
attributes of God. It is for this reason that He is named Sovereign
Grand Architect of the Universe.

4. Man is by nature a worker. It is only
in his work that a man finds himself, his fulfillment and satisfaction;
idlers and parasites become less than men, are ex-men. This truth
is plain to any observer; when a man ceases or refuses to work
an inner deterioration begins, first in his character, later in
his mind, and in the end his body undergoes a process of degeneration;
and while this process of disintegration goes forward he knows
himself to be under contempt.

5. To be able to carry on his work a man
must have Knowledge and intelligence which means education; he
must be free to think because work calls for reasoning and understanding;
he must one free to speak, because the larger part of the world's
work is done by numbers of men working together and therefore
they must have information from each other; they must one free
to enter or to leave any form of work because always some things
are completed and new things must be done, to work in continuous
association with each other establishes them in a fraternalism
a fact so clearly seen by Freemasonry that often it is said of
men in the same trade or art that "they have a freemasonry
among themselves," and it is this which is meant by morale
or esprit de corps.

There can be no chasms of class distinction
among workers because they must meet upon the level in order to
co-operate with each other. If a man be not honorable, upright,
and truthful it is not he alone who suffers from his failure;
his fellows suffer also, they and the work together. If work fails
the world fails, and workers and non-workers go down in catastrophe
together. no church or government is more stupid than one which
denies men the liberty to work, or interferes with the liberties
required by work.

The best thought of men about the matters
which belong to religion are embodied in the great organized Religions
such as Christianity, Judaism, hiohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism,
etc., and by them is stated in their creeds which in turn are
amplified and expounded and taught by their theologies. It is
an astounding fact that thus far no theology has ether embodied
in its creed any doctrines about work.

Men's best thought about their way of life
in the world is embodied in the great philosophies, of which the
first were founded by Greek thinkers of about 600 B.C. Although
a philosopher may endeavor to incorporate the whole world in his
system it is always found in the end that his philosophy consists
of the elaboration or exposition or exploration of some one idea
or truth or fact. The philosophy of Plato concerns itself with
ideas. Aristotle w as the philosopher of logic. Roman Stoicism
was an elaboration of the theory that there are laws of nature,
and that these are the laws of man. Descartes declared that everything
is a dualism of matter and mind; Spinoza declared that there is
no dualism and only one Reality, but that this Reality manifests
itself in the two modes of matter and mind. Kant was an epistemologist,
concerned with the nature of knowledge. Haeckel was a materialist.
Bergson examined and elaborated the fact of change, or flux, or
motion. There is scarcely an idea or truth capable of being thought
which has not been seized upon, expanded and expounded, and made
into a system of philosophy by some thinker. And yet, and again
it is an astounding fact, no Scnoum system of philosophy has eater
been devoted to tile subject of work! William James and John Dewey
have come closest to it but neither of them took work itself as
his subject matter but only used it as if it were a means to an
end. Thomas Carlyle saw the need for a philosophy of work, and
cried out for some man to do it, but did not produce it himself.

When the first Freemasons found out for
themselves the truth about work and though they did not embody
it in creeds or books but left it, as it were, to speak for itself,
and only among themselves, it w as a far greater achievement than
the discovery and perfection of Gothic cathedrals. They won a
place for themselves among history's great way-showers, thinkers,
philosophers, prophets. Nor is it any wonder that in those days
of feudalism they kept it among themselves, in their tiled rooms,
behind locked doors, and pledged every candidate to hold inviolate
the privacy of his Lodge. What they thought and taught and knew
was not a heresy, theological or philosophical, but it differed
so radically from the whole mass and drive of the beliefs and
practices of the feudalism around them that they saw no need to
disturb outsiders by what those outsiders could not have understood;
and not being fanatics, and having intelligence as well as character,
they saw no need to expose themselves to the fury of the priests
or the barbaric brutalities of the lords.

It is not all-important to Freemasons that
the founders of their Fraternity were builders, or even great
builders; the all-important fact is that they were great thinkers,
and found out for themselves a set of truths which no men had
found or seen before, and which, even now, only a few are beginning
to see; there would be neither point nor purpose for adult men
to carry on, month after month, a mere routine repetition of builder
customs. The soul of Freemasonry as well as its purpose in the
world. is the set of truths which they found. The fact that those
truths are not codified, or printed, or tabulated but are embodied
in rites and symbols and Lodge practices does not matter; they
are there, and while a man is being made a Mason they stamp themselves
upon his mind. It is because they are there that after a man has
worn off the first strangeness of being a member of a Lodge and
begins to learn for himself what Freemasonry is and what its history
has been, there begins to grow in him a zeal and an enthusiasm
for it. H. L. H.
FREIMAURER

German for Freemason. Mauer means a way,
and mauern, to build a way. Hence, literally, freimaurer is a
builder of ways, who is free of his gild, from the fact that the
building of walls was the first occupation of masons.
FREIMAUREREI

German for Freemasonry
FRElMAURERISCHE WELTGESCHAEFTSSTELLE, DIE

See International Bureau for Masonic Affairs
FREIMAURER, VEREIN DEUTSCHER

See Union of German Freemasons
FRENCH, BENJAMIN BROWN

A distinguished Freemason of the United
States, who was born at Chester, in New Hampshire, September 4,
1800, and died at the City of Washington, where he had long resided,
on August 12, 1870. He was initiated into Freemasonry in 1825,
and during his whole life took an active interest in the affairs
of the Fraternity.

He served for many years AS General Grand
Secretary of the General Grand Chapter, and Grand Recorder of
the Grand Encampment of the United States. In 1846, soon after
his arrival in Washington, he was elected Grand Master of the
Grand Lodge of the District, a position which he repeatedly occupied.
In 1859, he was elected Grand Master of the Templars of the United
States, a distinguished position which he held for six years,
having been reelected in 1862. His administration, during a period
of much excitement in the country, WAS marked by great firmness,
mingled with a spirit of conciliation. He was also a prominent
member of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and at the time
of his death was the Lieutenant Grand Commander of the Supreme
Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States.

Brother French was possessed of much intellectual
ability, and contributed no small share of his studies to the
literature of Freemasonry. His writings, which have not yet been
collected, were numerous, and consisted of Masonic odes, many
of them marked with the true poetic spirit, eloquent addresses
on various public occasions, learned dissertations on Masonic
law, and didactic essays, which were published at the time in
various periodicals. His decisions on Templar Law have always
been esteemed of great value.
FRENCH GUIANA

See Cayenne
FRENCH GUINEA

The capital of this district, Konakryy, on
the west coast of Africa, has one Lodge, No. 468, which is controlled
by the Grand Lodge of France, since 1916, and is named L'Etoile
de Guinée, meaning the Star of Guinea.
FRENCH INDO CHINA

See Indo-China, French, also Cochin China
FRENCH PRISONERS LODGES

Between 1740 and 1815, almost constant warfare
between France and Britain resulted in a large number of French
prisoners of war, who, from 1759 onwards, established Masonic
Lodges, working without Warrant or authority. Freemasonry was
exceedingly popular with the army of France and, while some French
officers visited and joined the local Lodges in England where
they were being held, most of them belonged to these French Prisoners'
Lodges conducted by themselves (see French Prisoners' Lodges,
an account of twenty six Lodges established by them in England
and elsewhere, John T. Thorp, 1900, Leicester, England).
FRENCH PRISONERS' LODGES

The short paragraph above was based
on French Prisoners' Lodges, by J. T. Thorp; Leicester, England;
1900. Bro. Thorp was one of those great and good men who would
have been a Mason in mind and spirit had he never united with
the Fraternity; and in addition belonged to that rare brotherhood
of good and great men whose hearts are as large and as active
as their intellectssuch a one as, in the Middle Ages, men
had described as "humane scholars." Once he discovered
that the French Prisoners' Lodges had existed, with infinite toil
he hunted out meager details about twenty-six of them, and published
a book about them. But it n as not in him to stop short; he made
the subject his own, kept it before him until he died; and, assisted
by Bros. Crowe, Sitwell, and Wonnacott, he accumulated so much
material that at the time of his death in 1932 he had a new and
much larger book prepared and ready to print. In 1935 it was brought
out by the Lodge of Research, Leicester, No. 2429; Freemasons'
Hall; Leicester; cloth; illustrated; 304 pages; with Introduction
by Lionel Vibert.

Bro. Thorp was made a Mason in John of Gaunt
Lodge, No. 523, in 1870; was its Master in 1875, and in 1882.
He was made a full member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research,
No. 2076, in 1900; was Master in 1909. He had already founded
Leieester Lodge of Research in 1892, and was its first Master.
"This Lodge," writes Bro. Vibert, "commenced the
issue of Transactions at once, and up to his [Thorp's] death he
was the Editor of them .... He was closely associated with that
great student, the late Bro. Hughan, who made him his literary
executor.... Besides several histories of Lodges which he published
as independent works, he issued, in connection with the Lodge
of Researeh, an important series of reprints of scarce Masonic
works .... In 1898 he became the possessor of the version of the
Old Charges that bears his name: a full account and transcript
will be found at A.Q.C.; XI, 205."

Great Britain and France were almost continuously
at war from 1740 to 1815. During the period called the Seven Years
War the average number of French prisoners of war in England averaged
18,800; in 1763 it was about 40,000. Between 1803 and 1814 some
122,000 army and navy prisoners were interned, most of them at
eight centers. Since Napoleon grabbed conscripts wherever he could
lay hands on them between 1810 and 1815, sometimes emptying them
out of prisons, there were among the prisoners interned in England
men of a dozen nationalities; and since Napoleon remitted no money
for their care (Great Britain remitted fifty cents a day for feeding
its own men in France), the suffering of the men, more than 200,000
of them between 1740 and 1814, was beyond description. In some
centers they were paroled; they even went into trades and secured
permanent positions; in other places they were locked up in verminous
barracks; the worst fate was for the thousands who were crowded
into old prison hulks. There were 34 of these ships. Thorp says:
"The mortality on these hulks was abnormally high."
"During the period with which these records deal 1756
to 1814 Freemasonry was as popular in the French as it was in
the British army . . . The members of the British Craft seem to
have done their utmost to alleviate the distress of these French
Brethren." (Note. If any Mason has the impression that the
Mystic Tie is only a pious sentiment, good in intention, but of
no great reality, or that the G.H.S.D. can be made in vain, he
can disabuse himself of the illusion by reading Thorp's book;
wherein, amid a somber blackness of misery almost too horrible
to contemplate, the Craft moved with its Great Lights; and on
more than one prison hulk it was the only star in a black night;
the same Mason can be further disillusioned if he will read the
history of a hundred or so army Lodges of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century. There are hundreds of instances on record; many as they
are, they are a minute fraction of the unrecorded instances which
occurred. The harder the Tie was stretched, and certainly it never
was so tightly stretched as on those prison hulks, the stronger
it becameperhaps it is for that very reason that it is called
a Mystic Tie!)

"That the Freemasons amongst the prisoners
on parole were received as visitors at Masonic meetings in England,
Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the minutes of Lodges at Leicester,
Winchester, Bandon, Selkirk, Kelso, Hawick, Melrose, Redruth and
other towns amply testify, and in some cases there is no doubt
they were initiated in, or became joining members of these Local
Lodges. In four cases in England, viz., at Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Chesterfield, Leek, and Northampton, the French Brethren obtained
a permit to hold their Lodges from the Earl of Moira, the Acting
Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England ...." (Page 29.)
FRENCH REVOLUTION, MASONRY AND

When French Fascists began the concerted
movement to overthrow the French Republic they organized a bureau,
a set of bureaus in reality, to make war on Freemasonry because
they believed the Lodges, centers of Protestantism and supporters
of free public schools, to be one of the Republic's strongest
supports. In doing so they employed in the 1920's one Bernard
Fa to write and publish a number of books which would undermine
Freemasonry not by a direct attack but under the disguise of a
fair and good-humored series of historical and biographical studies.
Mr. Fay came to the United States to write a biography of Benjamin
Franklin. In his capacity as a friendly visiting French scholar
he visited the Grand Lodge Library of New York, in New York City,
where he asked the courtesy of making use of it in order, he said,
to incorporate some pages on Franklin as a Mason, for, he said,
he believed that Franklin's Masonry had been a prime influence
in his career, etc.

The courtesy was granted and the facilities
of the Library staff were put at his disposal. But when the biography
appeared (it sold widely) it transpired that Mr. Fay had not sought
out the data on Franklin's Masonry to incorporate them truthfully
in his book but in order to twist and subtly distort them. There
is scarcely a true statement in his pages; he even states that
Franklin set out to "build up a Masonic press" in the
Colonies in order to undermine the government and to throw dictation
into the hands of the Masons! Had this been true the fifty or
sixty Masons in Philadelphia would have been more than busy l
The thing is a piece of mendacity, and it was unfortunate that
the Fraternity had no means to make known that fact to the publishers
and to the book reviewers.

Mr. Fay brought his contemptible purpose
into the light with another book, also published by an American
firm, in 1935, under the title of Revolution and Freemasonry.
The Fraternity cannot have the right nor could it have the desire
to dictate to American publishers what they may or may not publish,
but again it was unfortunate that no responsible Masonic agency
did not make clear to the general public what a set of lies were
incorporated in that book, and did not protest to the American
publisher for sponsoring a volume in which the facts about Freemasonry
were distorted, and with statements fabricated out of nothing.
Other books against the Fraternity had met with no resentment
because they had been written at least with sincerity, and were
untrue only because of ignorance; the Fa books were of another
species, because he was too well-informed not to know how false
to facts his statements were.

The two books taken together were American
Masonry's first experience of an anti-Masonic technique which
had been a employed in Europe since the 1890'sa bold, open
t assertion of lies and false accusations. The French Revolution
was an explosion of resentment by a whole people against an inhuman
regime did not begin anywhere in particular; was not conspired
or engineered. Except for a few, the French people had then never
even heard of Freemasonry because the Lodges were small and there
were few of them. Moreover there were as many Masons among the
Royalist parties as among the Revolutionary leaders. The general
popularity of the Craft which burst out so suddenly about 1800
was one of the results not one of the causes, of the Revolution.
(Revolution and Freemasonry, by Bernard Fay; Boston; Little, Brown
& Co.; 1935. After the fall of France in 1940 a Bernard Fay
was assigned to turn into the Petain headquarters at Vichy and
the German offices in Paris a list of the names and addresses
of Masons throughout France, in order that they should be 'purged";
at present writing it is not certain that this was the same Bernard
Fay who came to America to traduce a Fraternity to which the President
belonged, but both the circumstances and reports from abroad indicate
that it was. In a list of enemies published by the French underground
who were named for assassination published in Life Magazine his
name stood third in a list of ten. See also The t Secret Societies
and Subversive Movements, by Nesta Webster.)

Volume VIII of the Cambridge Modern History
consists of a history of the French Revolution. The sifted and
tested findings of thousands of historians and specialists who
for a century and a half had been at work accumulating data were
either represented or incorporated which means that the volume
was supported by the whole body of European, British, and American
scholarship and at the same time was sponsored by a University
which ranks above others in the field of historical research.
Against a history of that comprehensive authority a man like Mr.
Fay or a woman like Mrs. Webster have no weight.

The Cambridge volume contains more words
than ten large books of ordinary size and is a solid mass of facts;
yet in it are only three references to Masonry and the Revolution;
of these, two are items without significance; the third is on
page 772, in Chapter XXV: "The Masonic movement had challenged
traditional ideas." Had the whole body of historical scholarship
found that the Revolution had been a Masonic conspiracy and had
been engineered and led by the Fraternity, Freemasonry would have
been the subject-in-chief of the whole volume.

When Pope Leo in 1894 set up his Church's
Anti Masonic Bureau, and when Fascists of Italy, France, Germany,
Poland, Hungary, Belgium, and Spain made the obliteration of Freemasonry
one of the first undertakings on their agenda, they adopted the
technique of, first, attacking the personal reputation of individual
Masonic leaders; second, of publishing defamatory accusations
which were to be made of lies as large as possible and stated
as brazenly as possible on the presupposition that the majority
of readers would be too little informed about the Fraternity to
resist an cut-in-the-open mendacity.

That technique proved in its results to
be so effectual in Europe that it is almost certain to be adopted
by Anti-Masons in America. As regards any action taken for or
against the French Revolution by Regular and Duly-constituted
Lodges of English-speaking Freemasonry there is no room for guesswork
or surmise (as was explained to Mr. Fay in person when he was
in New York) because a detailed, complete record of evidence is
available to any historian. The present writer read for the period
1775-1815 the histories and Minute books of some 200 British and
American Lodges with this subject in view and found that British
Lodges almost never so much as mentioned the Revolution except
in some two or three instances where something was done "with
reference to the troubles in France."

The British government was at war with France
from 1801 to the Battle of Waterloo; Lodges without exception
continued loyal to their Government, and offices in Grand Lodge
and Provincial Grand Lodges were occupied by members of the Royal
Family.

The only action of any kind taken by any
British Lodges was to vote relief to French prisoners kept in
England, a Red Cross type of relief action and without political
significance. In American Lodges the Revolution was even more
completely ignored. The only exception of importance is page 37
of One Hundred and Seventy-five Years of Masonic History of Lodge
No. 2 (1758-1933) by Percival H. Granger; Philadelphia; 1933;
"We are told that the year 1793 was a portentous one."
The French emigres arrived in Philadelphia in large numbers about
this time and exerted a baneful influence upon our whole social
and political economy, for a time even threatening the stability
of our government and attempting to impeach and overthrow President
Washington. The first arrivals were fugitive royalists, and then
later were fugitives from San Domingo, and still later, Genet,
the representative of the new French Republic, and his followers.
The latter were opposed to religious services, and during the
yellow fever epidemic of 1793 succeeded in closing all but twelve
churches in Philadelphia. Their agitation, however, had little
effect upon the Lodges. Our Revolutionary War had won us independence
from Great Britain but had up to then left undisturbed the social
institutions which had been imported from Great Britain; the War
had not revolutionized American society and was not to do so in
effect until the Presidency of Andrew Jackson; the French Revolutionists
through Genet came to start a revolution here like the revolution
in France. The French counter-revolutionists, led by the Royalists
and the Roman hierarchy, wealthy and powerful, worked from centers
outside of France to destroy the new Republic in America in order
to discredit the Revolution in France. Between the two, Frenchmen
in general aroused so much resentment and hatred of both parties
that the friendliness Americans had felt for France in 1781 gave
way to hatred for everything French, and by 1825 had led to that
complete ignoring of France and indifference to everything "Frenchified"
that was to continue until after 1900.
FRENCH RITE

The French term is Rite Francais ou Moderne.
The French or Modern Rite is one of the three principal Rites
of Freemasonry. It consists of seven Degrees, three symbolic and
four higher, namely,

This Rite is practiced in France, in Brazil,
and in Louisiana. It was founded in 1786 by the Grand Orient of
France, who, unwilling to destroy entirely the advanced Degrees
which were then practiced by the different Rites, and yet anxious
to reduce them to a smaller number and to greater simplicity,
extracted these Degrees out of the Rite of Perfection, making
some few slight modifications. Most of the authors who have treated
of this Rite have given to its symbolism an entirely astronomical
meaning. Among these writers, we may refer to Ragon, in his Cours
Philosophiquc, as probably the most scientific..

Ragon, in his Tuileur Géneral, meaning
Handbook to the Degrees (page 51 ), says that the four Degrees
of the French Rite, which were elaborated to take the place of
the thirty Degrees of the Scottish Rite, have for their basis
the four physical proofs to which the recipiendary submits in
the First Degree. And that the symbolism further represents the
sun in its annual progress through the four seasons. Thus, the
Elect Degree represents the element of Earth and the season of
Springs the Scottish Master represents Air and the Summer; the
Knight of the East represents Water and Autumn; and the Rose Croix
represents Fire; but he does not claim that it is consecrated
to Winter, although that would be the natural conclusion.

The original Rose Croix was an eminently
Christian Degree, which, being found inconvenient, was in 1860
substituted by the Philosophic Rose Croix, which now Id forms
the summit of the French Rite.
FRERES PONTIFES

See Bridge Builders of the fiddle Ages
FREY or FREIA

Grimme, in his Deutsche Mythology (pages
191, 279), traces the name Freia through the ancient Teutonic
dialects and explains it to signify plenty and beauty (see Thorpe,
Northern Mythology, volume i, pages 197-8, for further information).
The column or pillar set apart to the goddess Frey in the temple
of Upsala became the pillar of beauty or plenteousness.

Brother Fort says, in his Antiquities (chapter
''7) the three divinities in the Norse temple at Upsala, in Denmark,
Odin, Thor, and Frey, were typical supports of the universe Wisdom,
Strength, and Beautyor the three of the ten columns in the
Hebrew Sephiroth, in the Jewish philosophy, designated as Sapientia,
Pulchritudo, and Fundamentum, which, like the three columns existing
in a Lodge of Freemasons, symbolize the moralistic pillars of
the world, represented by the Lodge itself. An additional significant
fact confronts us at this point: the column of Beauty or Plenty,
originally emblematic of Frey, is situated in the south of the
Lodge. Masonic symbolsheaf of grainalways suspended
above that station, denoted plenteousness. Freia may also be comparatively
described as the Scandinavian Isis, the principal goddess of Egyptian
mythology.
FRIENDLY SOCIETIES

Societies first established toward the end
of the eighteenth century, in England, for the relief of mechanics,
laborers, and other persons who derived their support from their
daily toil. By the weekly payment of a stipulated sum, the members
secured support, and assistance from the society when sick, and
payment of the expenses of burial when they died. These societies
gave origin to the Odd Fellows and other similar associations,
but they have no relation whatever to Freemasonry.
FRIENDLY SOCIETY OF FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS

Brother W. Wonnacott (on page 45, Transactions,
Quatuor Coronati Lodge volume xxvii 1914) mentioned a Society
conducted as a club for mutual benefit, which in 1737 met at the
White Swan tavern in New Street, Covent Garden, London, and went
by the name of the Friendly society of Free and Accepted Masons
(see also Miscellanea Latomorum, August, 1913, page 13).
FRIEND OF ST. JOHN

The Sixth Degree of the system practiced
by the Grand Lodge of Sweden. It is comprehended in the Degree
of Knight of the blast and West.
FRIEND OF TRUTH

The Fifth Degree of the Rite of African
architects
FRIENDSHIP

Leslie, in 1741, delivered the first discourse
on Friendship, as peculiarly a Masonic virtue. He was followed
by Hutchinson, Preston, and other writers, and now in the modern
lectures it is adopted as one of the precious jewels of a Master
Freemason. Of universal friendship, blue is said to be the symbolic
color. "In regular gradation," says Munkhouse (Discussions
i, 17), "and by an easy descent, brotherly love extends itself
to lesser distinct societies or to particular individuals, and
thus becomes friendship either of convenience or personal affection."
Cicero says, "Amicitia nisi inter bonos non potest,"
'meaning, "Friendship can exist only among the good."
FUND, GRAND MASTERS

A fund over which the Grand Master of the
United Grand Lodge of England exercises exclusive control. It
originated with a sum of £2,730 subscribed by the Craft
in 1870, when the Earl of Zetland retired from the Grand Mastership,
and is known as the Zetland Fund.
FUND OF BENEVOLENCE

A fund established in 1727 by the Grand Lodge of England, and solely
devoted to charity. The regulations for its management are as
follows: Its distinction and application is directed by the Constitutions
to be monthly for which purpose a Board of Benevolence is holden
on the last Wednesday of every month except December, when it
is on the third Wednesday. This Lodge consists of all the present
and past Grand Officers, all actual Masters of Lodges, and twelve
Past Masters.

The Brother presiding is bound strictly
to enforce all the regulations of the Craft respecting the distribution
of the fund, and must be satisfied, before any petition is read,
that all the required formalities have been complied with. To
every petition must be added a recommendation, signed in open
Lodge by the Master, Wardens, and a majority of the members then
present, to which the petitioner does or did belong, or from some
other contributing Lodge, certifying that they have known him
to have been in reputable or at least tolerable, circumstances,
and that he has been not less than five years a subscribing member
to a regular Lodge.
FUNDS OF THE LODGE

The funds of the Lodge are placed in the
keeping of the Treasurer, to whom all moneys received by the Secretary
must be immediately paid. Hence each of these officers is a check
on the other. And hence, too, the Thirty-nine Regulations of 1721
say that the Grand Treasurer should he "a Brother of good
worldly substance" (see Constitutions, 1723) lest impecuniosity
and the urge of poverty should tempt him to make use of the Lodge
funds .
FUNERAL LODGE

See Sorrow Lodge
FUNERAL RITES

See Burial
FURLAC

A word in the advanced Degrees, whose etymology
is uncertain, but probably from the Arabic. It is said to signify
the Angel of the Earth.
FURNITURE OF A LODGE

The Bible, Square, and Compasses are technically
said to constitute the furniture of a Lodge. They are respectively
dedicated to God, the Master of the Lodge, and the Craft. Our
English Brethren differ from those in the United States in their
explanation of the furniture. Brother George Oliver gives their
illustration, from the English lectures (in his Landmark I, 169)
as follows:

The Bible is said to derive from God to man in general because
the Almighty has been pleased to reveal more of His divine will
by that holy book than by any other means. The Compasses, being
the chief implement used in the construction of all architectural
plans and designs, He assigned to the Grand Master in particular
as emblems of his dignity, he being the chief head and ruler of
the Craft. The Square is given to the whole Masonic body, because
we are all obligated within it, and are consequently bound to
act thereon.

But the lecture of the early part of the
eighteenth century made the furniture consist of the Mosaic Pavement,
Blazing Star, and the Indented Tarsel, while the Bible, Square,
and Compasses were considered as additional furniture.
FUSTIER

An officer of the Grand Orient of France
in the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1810, he published,
and presented to the Grand Orient, a Geographical Chart of the
Lodges in France and its Dependencies. He was the author of several
memoirs, dissertations, etc., on Masonic subjects, and of a manuscript
in French entitled Nomenclature Alphabétiquc des Grades,
or Alphabetical List of Names of Degrees. Brother George Oliver
in his Landmarks (95), Says that he promul gated a new system
of sixty-four Degrees. But he seems to have mistaken Fustier's
catalogue of Degrees invented by others for a system established
by him self. No record can be found elsewhere of such a system.
Lenning says (Encyclopedie der Freimaurerei, the German for
Encyclopedia of Freemasonry) that Fustier was a dealer in Masonic
decorations and in the transcription of rituals, of which he had
made a collection of more than four hundred, which he sold at
established prices.
FUTURE LIFE

Lorenzo de Medici said that all those are
dead, even for the present life, who do not believe in a future
state. The belief in that future life, it is the object of Freemasonry,
as it was of the ancient initiations, to teach (see Immortality
of the Soul).
FYLFOT

An ancient symbol well known in the science
of coats of arms and the other details of heraldry. It is sometimes
known as the Crux dissimulata, found in the catacombs of Rome,
and forms one of the symbols of the Degrees of Prince of Mercy,
Scottish Rite System. It is a form of the Swastika (see Jaina
Cross)
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